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Updated: Dec 12, 2025
Visualizing Uniaxial-strain Manipulation of Antiferromagnetic Domains in Fe1+YTe Using a Spin-polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Published on: March 24, 2019
Key Role of the Surface Band Structure in Spin-Dependent Interfacial Electron Transfer: Ar/Fe(110) and Ar/Co(0001)
Moritz Müller1,2,3, Pedro Miguel Echenique1,2,4, Daniel Sánchez-Portal1,2
1Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Paseo de Manuel Lardizabal 4, San Sebastián-Donostia 20018, Spain.
Abstract:
The injection of spin-polarized electrons across interfaces is central to many technologies, and hence, it is important to understand the main ingredients controlling it. Here, we demonstrate that the spin dependence of ultrafast electron transfer at Ar/Co(0001) and Ar/Fe(110) interfaces is rooted in the details of the spin-split surface band structures. The injection dynamics are particularly sensitive to the sizes (in reciprocal space) of projected electronic band gaps around Γ̅. Our ab initio calculations back that minority electrons are injected significantly faster than majority electrons in line with recently reported experimental injection times. A simple tunnelling model incorporating the spin-dependent gap sizes confirms that this ingredient is crucial to rationalize the experimental results.
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