Proximity Induced Enhancement of the Curie Temperature in Hybrid Spin Injection Devices

Abstract

We investigate the increase of the Curie temperature TC in a lateral spin injection geometry where the ferromagnetic (Ga,Mn)As injector and detector contacts are capped by a thin iron film. Because of interlayer coupling between Fe and (Ga,Mn)As TC gets enhanced by nearly 100% for the thinnest (Ga,Mn)As films. The use of the proximity effect might pave the way for practical implementation of spintronic devices.