Spin-valve effect through electrostatic coupling

We propose a spin-valve effect in which an insulating magnetic van der Waals multilayer controls the conductance of an adjacent non-magnetic conductor by electrostatic coupling, without transport-electrons entering the magnetic layers. The coupling is induced by the variations of the electronic structure when the relative orientation of the magnetization of adjacent monolayers changes from parallel to antiparallel, modifying both the dielectric constant and band alignment. We consider two types of coupling and device concepts: charge transfer to a graphene monolayer and capacitive coupling in a single-electron transistor. We use density functional calculations to assess the magnitude of the effect in various materials, including CrI₃, CrBr₃, CrCl₃ and NiBr₂. We predict magnetoresistance ratios in the range of 1.14-1.20 for the charge-transfer device and up to 10³ in the single-electron transistor.