High and reversible spin polarization in a collinear antiferromagnet

Antiferromagnetic materials are expected to trigger the revolution of spintronic applications because they are robust against the perturbation of magnetic fields, produce no stray fields, and display ultrafast dynamics. To design antiferromagnetic devices, the generation and manipulation of spin-polarized current in antiferromagnetic materials are vital. Unfortunately, it has long been believed that spin-polarized current could not be achieved in collinear antiferromagnetic materials because of the symmetry of spin sublattices. Inspired by the possibility of breaking the symmetry using a bias voltage, a special Au/NiO/Au junction is proposed and constructed along the [111] direction of NiO using the collinear NiO antiferromagnetic insulator as a prototype. It was found that the symmetry of spin sublattices was broken by an external bias, which induces a nonequivalent transport for spin-up and spin-down currents, that is, the appearance of spin-polarized current. Unexpectedly, this study found that the magnitude and sign of spin polarization could be adjusted by varying the bias. A positive spin polarization up to 80% was obtained at ∼ 0.9 V, and the spin polarization turned negative when the bias voltage was beyond 1.6 V. The related physical mechanisms were explored and clarified by analyzing spin-resolved transmission, kǁ-resolved density of states, and layer-resolved local density of states of Au/NiO/Au, etc. The effects of NiO layer thicknesses, different electrodes, and interfacial disorders on the spin polarization were also analyzed and found to offer promising applications. This study provides new physical insight into spin-polarized current transport in collinear antiferromagnetic materials and greatly contributes to the development of novel antiferromagnetic spintronic devices.