Magnetoresistance of graphene-based spin valves

We study the magnetoresistance of spin-valve devices using graphene as a nonmagnetic material to connect ferromagnetic leads. As a preliminary step, we first study the conductivity of a graphene strip connected to metallic contacts for a variety of lead parameters and demonstrate that the resulting conductivity is rather insensitive to them. We then compute the conductivity of the spin-valve device in the parallel and antiparallel spin polarization configurations and find that it depends only weakly on the relative spin orientations of the leads, so that the magnetoresistance (MR) of the system is very small. The smallness of MR is a consequence of the near independence of the graphene conductivity from the electronic details of the leads. Our results indicate that, although graphene has properties that make it attractive for spintronic devices, the performance of a graphene-based spin-valve is likely to be poor.