Room-temperature tunnel magnetoresistance across biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritin

Senthil Kumar Karuppannan; Rupali Reddy Pasula; Tun Seng Herng; Jun Ding; Xiao Chi; Enrique Del Barco; Stephan Roche; Xiaojiang Yu; Nikolai Yakovlev; Sierin Lim; Christian A. Nijhuis

doi:10.1088/2515-7639/abfa79

Room-temperature tunnel magnetoresistance across biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritin

Senthil Kumar Karuppannan
, Rupali Reddy Pasula
, Tun Seng Herng
, Jun Ding
, Xiao Chi
, Enrique Del Barco
, Stephan Roche
, Xiaojiang Yu
, Nikolai Yakovlev
, Sierin Lim^*
, Christian A. Nijhuis^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

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Abstract

We report exceptionally large tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) for biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritins immobilized between Ni and EGaIn electrodes. Ferritin stores iron in the form of ferrihydrite nanoparticles (NPs) and fulfills the following roles: (a) it dictates the tunnel barrier, (b) it magnetically decouples the NPs from the ferromagnetic (FM) electrode, (c) it stabilizes the NPs, and (d) it acts as a spin filter reducing the complexity of the tunnel junctions since only one FM electrode is required. The mechanism of charge transport is long-range tunneling which results in TMR of 60 ± 10% at 200 K and 25 ± 5% at room temperature. We propose a magnon-assisted transmission to explain the substantially larger TMR switching fields (up to 1 Tesla) than the characteristic coercive fields (a few Gauss) of ferritin ferrihydrite particles at T < 20 K. These results highlight the genuine potential of biomolecular tunnel junctions in designing functional nanoscale spintronic devices.

Original language	English
Article number	035003
Journal	Journal of Physics : Materials
Volume	4
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7639/abfa79
Publication status	Published - Jul 2021

Keywords

Biomolecular tunnel junction
EGaIn
Ferritin
Ferromagnetic/molecule interface
Magnons
Tunneling magnetoresistance
UT-Gold-D

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Karuppannan_2021_J._Phys._Mater._4_035003Final published version, 1.45 MBLicence: CC BY

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@article{cf20efa3ba024998a1187063234e78b2,

title = "Room-temperature tunnel magnetoresistance across biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritin",

abstract = "We report exceptionally large tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) for biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritins immobilized between Ni and EGaIn electrodes. Ferritin stores iron in the form of ferrihydrite nanoparticles (NPs) and fulfills the following roles: (a) it dictates the tunnel barrier, (b) it magnetically decouples the NPs from the ferromagnetic (FM) electrode, (c) it stabilizes the NPs, and (d) it acts as a spin filter reducing the complexity of the tunnel junctions since only one FM electrode is required. The mechanism of charge transport is long-range tunneling which results in TMR of 60 ± 10\% at 200 K and 25 ± 5\% at room temperature. We propose a magnon-assisted transmission to explain the substantially larger TMR switching fields (up to 1 Tesla) than the characteristic coercive fields (a few Gauss) of ferritin ferrihydrite particles at T < 20 K. These results highlight the genuine potential of biomolecular tunnel junctions in designing functional nanoscale spintronic devices.",

keywords = "Biomolecular tunnel junction, EGaIn, Ferritin, Ferromagnetic/molecule interface, Magnons, Tunneling magnetoresistance, UT-Gold-D",

author = "Karuppannan, \{Senthil Kumar\} and Pasula, \{Rupali Reddy\} and Herng, \{Tun Seng\} and Jun Ding and Xiao Chi and \{Del Barco\}, Enrique and Stephan Roche and Xiaojiang Yu and Nikolai Yakovlev and Sierin Lim and Nijhuis, \{Christian A.\}",

note = "Funding Information: We acknowledge the Ministry of Education (MOE) for supporting this research under award No. MOE2019-T2-1-137. Prime Minister{\textquoteright}s Office, Singapore under its Medium sized center program is also acknowledged for supporting this research. We kindly acknowledge the Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) supporting our experiments at the SINS beam line under NUS core support C-380-003-003-001. We would like to acknowledge beamline scientists Dr Bruce Cowie and Dr Anton Tadich (soft x-ray (SXR) Beamline at the Australian Synchrotron) for their immense support. E d B acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation (Grant No.: ECCS\#1916874). S R acknowledges funding from CA2DM-NUS during his stay in Singapore. ICN2 is funded by the CERCA programme/generalitat de Catalunya, and the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MINECO (Grant No. SEV-2017-0706). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.",

year = "2021",

month = jul,

doi = "10.1088/2515-7639/abfa79",

language = "English",

volume = "4",

journal = "Journal of Physics : Materials",

issn = "2515-7639",

publisher = "Institute of Physics (IOP)",

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T1 - Room-temperature tunnel magnetoresistance across biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritin

AU - Karuppannan, Senthil Kumar

AU - Pasula, Rupali Reddy

AU - Herng, Tun Seng

AU - Ding, Jun

AU - Chi, Xiao

AU - Del Barco, Enrique

AU - Roche, Stephan

AU - Yu, Xiaojiang

AU - Yakovlev, Nikolai

AU - Lim, Sierin

AU - Nijhuis, Christian A.

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge the Ministry of Education (MOE) for supporting this research under award No. MOE2019-T2-1-137. Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its Medium sized center program is also acknowledged for supporting this research. We kindly acknowledge the Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) supporting our experiments at the SINS beam line under NUS core support C-380-003-003-001. We would like to acknowledge beamline scientists Dr Bruce Cowie and Dr Anton Tadich (soft x-ray (SXR) Beamline at the Australian Synchrotron) for their immense support. E d B acknowledges support from the US National Science Foundation (Grant No.: ECCS#1916874). S R acknowledges funding from CA2DM-NUS during his stay in Singapore. ICN2 is funded by the CERCA programme/generalitat de Catalunya, and the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MINECO (Grant No. SEV-2017-0706). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - We report exceptionally large tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) for biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritins immobilized between Ni and EGaIn electrodes. Ferritin stores iron in the form of ferrihydrite nanoparticles (NPs) and fulfills the following roles: (a) it dictates the tunnel barrier, (b) it magnetically decouples the NPs from the ferromagnetic (FM) electrode, (c) it stabilizes the NPs, and (d) it acts as a spin filter reducing the complexity of the tunnel junctions since only one FM electrode is required. The mechanism of charge transport is long-range tunneling which results in TMR of 60 ± 10% at 200 K and 25 ± 5% at room temperature. We propose a magnon-assisted transmission to explain the substantially larger TMR switching fields (up to 1 Tesla) than the characteristic coercive fields (a few Gauss) of ferritin ferrihydrite particles at T < 20 K. These results highlight the genuine potential of biomolecular tunnel junctions in designing functional nanoscale spintronic devices.

AB - We report exceptionally large tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) for biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritins immobilized between Ni and EGaIn electrodes. Ferritin stores iron in the form of ferrihydrite nanoparticles (NPs) and fulfills the following roles: (a) it dictates the tunnel barrier, (b) it magnetically decouples the NPs from the ferromagnetic (FM) electrode, (c) it stabilizes the NPs, and (d) it acts as a spin filter reducing the complexity of the tunnel junctions since only one FM electrode is required. The mechanism of charge transport is long-range tunneling which results in TMR of 60 ± 10% at 200 K and 25 ± 5% at room temperature. We propose a magnon-assisted transmission to explain the substantially larger TMR switching fields (up to 1 Tesla) than the characteristic coercive fields (a few Gauss) of ferritin ferrihydrite particles at T < 20 K. These results highlight the genuine potential of biomolecular tunnel junctions in designing functional nanoscale spintronic devices.

KW - Biomolecular tunnel junction

KW - EGaIn

KW - Ferritin

KW - Ferromagnetic/molecule interface

KW - Magnons

KW - Tunneling magnetoresistance

KW - UT-Gold-D

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85106549352

U2 - 10.1088/2515-7639/abfa79

DO - 10.1088/2515-7639/abfa79

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85106549352

SN - 2515-7639

VL - 4

JO - Journal of Physics : Materials

JF - Journal of Physics : Materials

IS - 3

M1 - 035003

ER -

Room-temperature tunnel magnetoresistance across biomolecular tunnel junctions based on ferritin

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