Nano spin-diodes using FePt-NDs with huge on/off current ratio at room temperature

Spin transistors have attracted tremendous interest as new functional devices. However, few studies have investigated enhancements of the ON/OFF current ratio as a function of the electron spin behavior. Here, we found a significantly high spin-dependent current ratio—more than 10(2) at 1.5 V—when changing the relative direction of the magnetizations between FePt nanodots (NDs) and the CoPtCr-coated atomic force microscope (AFM) probe at room temperature. This means that ON and OFF states were achieved by switching the magnetization of the FePt NDs, which can be regarded as spin-diodes. The FePt magnetic NDs were fabricated by exposing a bi-layer metal stack to a remote H(2) plasma (H(2)-RP) on ~1.7 nm SiO(2)/Si(100) substrates. The ultrathin bi-layers with a uniform surface coverage are changed drastically to NDs with an areal density as high as ~5 × 10(11) cm(−2). The FePt NDs exhibit a large perpendicular anisotropy with an out-of-plane coercivity of ~4.8 kOe, reflecting the magneto-crystalline anisotropy of (001) oriented L1(0) phase FePt. We also designed and fabricated double-stacked FePt-NDs with low and high coercivities sandwiched between an ultra-thin Si-oxide interlayer, and confirmed a high ON/OFF current ratio when switching the relative magnetization directions of the low and high coercivity FePt NDs.