Electrical spin injection from an organic-based ferrimagnet in a hybrid organic/inorganic heterostructure

We report the successful extraction of spin polarized current from the organic-based room temperature ferrimagnetic semiconductor V[TCNE]x (x~2, TCNE: tetracyanoethylene; TC ~ 400 K, EG ~ 0.5 eV, s ~ 10-2 S/cm) and its subsequent injection into a GaAs/AlGaAs light-emitting diode (LED). The spin current tracks the magnetization of V[TCNE]x~2, is weakly temperature dependent, and exhibits heavy hole / light hole asymmetry. This result has implications for room temperature spintronics and the use of inorganic materials to probe spin physics in organic and molecular systems.