Spin-dependent electronic transport through magnetic molecules

Electronic transport through magnetic molecules has recently received considerable attention. This is partly motivated by the idea to integrate spintronics with molecular electronics. This talk highlights a number of interesting effects we predict for tunneling through single magnetic molecules and molecular monolayers weakly coupled to metallic leads. The results are obtained in a rate-equation approach which treats the intra-molecular interactions exactly and works also for situations far from equilibrium (large bias voltage). Effects to be discussed include fingerprints of magnetic excitations seen in inelastic tunneling beyond the sequential-tunneling approximation, very slow spin relaxation, giant spin amplification, and negative differential conductance at high temperatures.