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Abstract:
We report on the demonstration of ferromagnetic spin injectors for spintronics which are
protected against oxidation through the passivation by a single layer of graphene. The
graphene monolayer is directly grown by catalytic chemical vapor deposition on prepatterned
nickel electrodes. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals that even with its
monoatomic thickness, monolayer graphene still efficiently protects spin sources against
oxidation in ambient air. The resulting single layer passivated electrodes are integrated
into spin valves and demonstrated to act as spin polarizers. Strikingly, the atom-thick
graphene layer is shown to be sufficient to induce a characteristic spin filtering effect
evidenced through the sign reversal of the measured magnetoresistance.
