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, σ300 K~10^-2 S/cm) and its subsequent injection into a GaAs/AlGaAs light-emitting diode. 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.