Spin injection and perpendicular spin transport in graphite nanostructures

Organic- and carbon-based materials are attractive for spintronics because their small spin-orbit coupling and low hyperfine interaction is expected to give rise to large spin-relaxation times. However, the corresponding spin-relaxation length is not necessarily large when transport is via weakly interacting molecular orbitals. Here we use graphite as a model system and study spin transport in the direction perpendicular to the weakly bonded graphene sheets. We achieve injection of highly 75% spin-polarized electrons into graphite nanostructures of 300–500 nm across and up to 17 nm thick, and observe transport without any measurable loss of spin information. Direct visualization of local spin transport in graphite-based spin-valve sandwiches also shows spatially uniform and near-unity transmission for electrons at 1.8 eV above the Fermi level.