Graphene Spintronics

The isolation of graphene has triggered an avalanche of studies into the spin-dependent physical properties of this material, as well as graphene-based spintronic devices. Here we review the experimental and theoretical state-of-art concerning spin injection and transport, defect-induced magnetic moments, spin-orbit coupling and spin relaxation in graphene. Future research in graphene spintronics will need to address the development of applications such as spin transistors and spin logic devices, as well as exotic physical properties including topological states and proximity-induced phenomena in graphene and other 2D materials.Comment: 47 Pages, 6 figure

Spin relaxation mechanism in graphene: resonant scattering by magnetic impurities

It is proposed that the observed small (100 ps) spin relaxation time in graphene is due to resonant scattering by local magnetic moments. At resonances, magnetic moments behave as spin hot spots: the spin-flip scattering rates are as large as the spin-conserving ones, as long as the exchange interaction is greater than the resonance width. Smearing of the resonance peaks by the presence of electron-hole puddles gives quantitative agreement with experiment, for about 1 ppm of local moments. While the local moments can come from a variety of sources, we specifically focus on hydrogen adatoms. We perform first-principles supercell calculations and introduce an effective Hamiltonian to obtain realistic input parameters for our mechanism.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures + Suppl. material (3 pages, 5 figures

A stable path to ferromagnetic hydrogenated graphene growth

In this paper, we propose a practical way to stabilize half-hydrogenated graphene (graphone). We show that the dipole moments induced by an hexagonal-boron nitride (h-BN) substrate on graphene stabilize the hydrogen atoms on one sublattice of the graphene layer and suppress the migration of the absorbed hydrogen atoms. Based upon first principle spin polarized density of states (DOS) calculations, we show that the half hydrogenated graphene (graphone) obtained in different graphene-h-BN heterostructures exhibits a half metallic state. We propose to use this new exotic material for spin valve and other spintronics devices and applications.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Magnetic impurities in graphane with dehydrogenated channels

We have investigated the electronic and magnetic response of a single Fe atom and a pair of interacting Fe atoms placed in patterned dehydrogenated channels in graphane within the framework of density functional theory. We have considered two channels: "armchair" and "zigzag" channels. Fully relaxed calculations have been carried out for three different channel widths. Our calculations reveal that the response to the magnetic impurities is very different for these two channels. We have also shown that one can stabilize magnetic impurities (Fe in the present case) along the channels of bare carbon atoms, giving rise to a magnetic insulator or a spin gapless semiconductor. Our calculations with spin-orbit coupling shows a large in-plane magnetic anisotropy energy for the case of the armchair channel. The magnetic exchange coupling between two Fe atoms placed in the semiconducting channel with an armchair edge is very weakly ferromagnetic whereas a fairly strong ferromagnetic coupling is observed for reasonable separations between Fe atoms in the zigzag-edged metallic channel with the coupling mediated by the bare carbon atoms. The possibility of realizing an ultrathin device with interesting magnetic properties is discussed

Ab initio spin-flip conductance of hydrogenated graphene nanoribbons: Spin-orbit interaction and scattering with local impurity spins

We calculate the spin-dependent zero-bias conductance $G_{\sigma\sigma'}$ in armchair graphene nanoribbons with hydrogen adsorbates employing a DFT-based ab initio transport formalism including spin-orbit interaction. We find that the spin-flip conductance $G_{\sigma\bar{\sigma}}$ can reach the same order of magnitude as the spin-conserving one, $G_{\sigma\sigma}$, due to exchange-mediated spin scattering. In contrast, the genuine spin-orbit interaction appears to play a secondary role, only

Enhanced spin-orbit coupling in hydrogenated and fluorinated graphenes studied from first principles

The spin-orbit couplings (SOCs) of hydrogenated and fluorinated graphenes are calculated from the first principles method. It is found that the SOC-induced band splittings near their Fermi energies can be significantly enhanced to the order of 10$^{-2}$ eV from the original about 10$^{-6}$ eV of the pure raphene, which is comparable to those found in the diamond and even the archetypal semiconductors. And two different mechanisms are proposed to explain the SOC enhancements in these two systems. The huge SOC enhancements are found to come not only from the sp$^3$ hybridization of carbon atoms, but also from the larger intrinsic SOC of the fluorine atom than the carbon one. We hope many interesting phenomena caused by the SOCs (e.g. the spin Hall effect) can be observed experimentally in these systems.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, and 1 tabl

Role of direct exchange and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in magnetic properties of graphene derivatives: C2_2F and C2_2H

According to the Lieb's theorem the ferromagnetic interaction in graphene-based materials with bipartite lattice is a result of disbalance between the number of sites available for $p_z$ electrons in different sublattices. Here, we report on another mechanism of the ferromagnetism in functionalized graphene that is the direct exchange interaction between spin orbitals. By the example of the single-side semihydrogenated (C$_2$H) and semifluorinated (C$_2$F) graphene we show that such a coupling can partially or even fully compensate antiferromagnetic character of indirect exchange interactions reported earlier [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 88}, 081405(R) (2013)]. As a result, C$_2$H is found to be a two-dimensional material with the isotropic ferromagnetic interaction and negligibly small magnetic anisotropy, which prevents the formation of the long-range magnetic order at finite temperature in accordance with the Mermin-Wagner theorem. This gives a rare example of a system where direct exchange interactions play a crucial role in determining a magnetic structure. In turn, C$_2$F is found to be at the threshold of the antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic instability, which in combination with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can lead to a skyrmion state.Comment: 10 page