2017/09/12 by Övergaard, T., Wojek, B. M, Leandersson, M. +4
#FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1709.03838
Free-standing ferromagnetic nano-membranes with thicknesses below 10 nm could effectively be used for spin selective filtering of electrons. Such membranes can work both as spin detectors in electron-spectroscopy, -microscopy and -diffraction as well as a source of spin polarized electrons. Theoretical studies and previous work has indicated that ferromagnetic membranes of a few nm have Sherman functions in the 30-60 % range and would provide an effective alternative to current spin detection technology. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of gold capped Co nano-membranes with a 2.6 nm Co layer and a total thickness below 10 nm. The membranes have a Sherman function S≈ 0.41 and a transmission of 3.7× 10-2 for electron energies of 2 eV. The integration of such spin-filtering membranes in a hemispherical electron analyzer is shown to provide massively parallel detection capabilities and a "2-dimensional" figure of merit FOM2D = 67.2, the highest reported to date.