Spin and valley dependent transport and tunneling magnetoresistance in irradiated ferromagnetic WSe2double barrier junctions

Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 6;15(1):870. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-81964-0.

Abstract

Spin and valley polarizations (Ps and PKK') and tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) are demonstrated in the ferromagnetic/barrier/normal/barrier/ferromagnetic WSe2 junction, with the gate voltage and off-resonant circularly polarized light (CPL) applied to the two barrier regions. The minimum incident energy of non-zero spin- and valley-resolved conductance has been derived, which is consistent with numerical calculations and depends on the electric potential U, CPL intensity ΔΩ, exchange field h, and magnetization configuration: parallel (P) or antiparallel (AP). For the P (AP) configuration, the energy region with PKK' = -1 or Ps = 1 is wider (narrower) and increases with ΔΩ. As h increases, the Ps = 1 (PKK' = -1 or Ps = 1) plateau becomes wider (narrower) for the P (AP) configuration. As U increases, the energy region with PKK' = -1 increases first and then moves parallel to the EF-axis, and the energy region with Ps = 1 for the P configuration remains unchanged first and then decreases. The energy region for TMR = 1 increases rapidly with h, remains unchanged first and then decreases as U increases, and has little dependence on ΔΩ. When the helicity of the CPL reverses, the valley polarization will switch. This work sheds light on the design of spin-valley and TMR devices based on ferromagnetic WSe2 double-barrier junctions.

Keywords: Circularly polarized light; Landauer-Büttiker formula; Spin/valley polarization; TMR; Transfer matrix method; WSe2.