Molcular spntronics: tailoring spin polarization with molecules

Organic/molecular spintronics is a rising research field at the frontier between spintronics and organic chemistry. Organic molecules and semiconductors were first seen as promising for spintronics devices due to the expected long spin lifetime. An exciting challenge is now to find opportunities arising from chemistry to develop new spintronics functionalities that were unavailable with inorganic materials. Here one can hope to control the spin dependent transport by using the chemical versatility brought by molecules and molecular engineering. Starting from the use of Alq3 and Phthalocyanine molecules we will show how the ferromagnetic metal/molecule hybridization can strongly influence the interfacial spin properties: from spin polarization enhancement to its sign control. CNRS/Thales team: C. Barraud, P. Seneor, R. Mattana, S. Tatay, K. Bouzehouane, S. Fusil, C. Deranlot, F. Petroff, A. Fert in collaboration with ISMN, Bologna, Italy \& IPCMS, Strasbourg, France