Quantitative study of spin relaxation in rubrene thin films by inverse spin Hall effect

Spin relaxation properties of π-conjugated organic semiconductors are key indicators of the performance of organic spintronic devices. However, reliable determination of spin relaxation parameters in organic materials is hindered by complex interfacial phenomena at organic/ferromagnetic metal interfaces that couple spin injection with charge injection. Here, we study the spin pumping induced pure spin transport in Permalloy/rubrene/Pt trilayers and determine the spin diffusion length λ_s = 132 ± 9 nm and the spin relaxation time τ_s = 3.8 ± 0.5 ms in rubrene films at room temperature by using the inverse spin Hall effect. The determined spin diffusion length λ_s is found to be almost two times larger than that of ∼46.3 nm at 100 K extracted from rubrene spin valve devices in which charge carrier injection/detection occurs at organic/ferromagnetic metal interfaces. Our results demonstrate experimentally that the efficiency and the rate of spin polarized charge transport through the organic/ferromagnetic metal interface play a dominant role in determining the spin relaxation process of spin valve devices in which charge and spin currents are coupled.