  Economical solar energy conversion to electricity can be boosted by the
discovery of fundamentally new photovoltaic mechanism, and a suitable system to
realize it with commonly available materials like iron (Fe) and nickel (Ni).
This paper reports the observation of photovoltaic effect on a molecular
spintronics device, composed of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) and
organometallic molecular clusters (OMCs). A prefabricated MTJ with exposed side
edges, after enabling the bridging of OMC channels between its two
ferromagnetic films, exhibited following phenomenon (i) dramatic increase in
exchange coupling, (ii) 3-6 orders current suppression and (iii) photovoltaic
effect. This paper focuses on the photovoltaic effect. Control experiments on
isolated ferromagnetic films suggested that OMCs neither affected the magnetic
properties nor produced any photovoltaic effect; photovoltaic effect was only
observed on the ferromagnetic films serving as magnetic electrodes in a MTJ.
Present paper invites further investigation of the similar photovoltaic effect
on other combinations of MTJs and promising magnetic molecules, like single
molecular magnets, organometallic clusters and porphyrins. This research can
lead to mass producible and economical spin photovoltaic devices.
