Graphene for spintronics: giant Rashba splitting due to hybridization with Au

Graphene in spintronics has so far primarily meant spin current leads of high performance because the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling of its pi-electrons is very weak. If a large spin-orbit coupling could be created by a proximity effect, the material could also form active elements of a spintronic device such as the Das-Datta spin field-effect transistor, however, metal interfaces often compromise the band dispersion of massless Dirac fermions. Our measurements show that Au intercalation at the graphene-Ni interface creates a giant spin-orbit splitting (~100 meV) in the graphene Dirac cone up to the Fermi energy. Photoelectron spectroscopy reveals hybridization with Au-5d states as the source for the giant spin-orbit splitting. An ab initio model of the system shows a Rashba-split dispersion with the analytically predicted gapless band topology around the Dirac point of graphene and indicates that a sharp graphene-Au interface at equilibrium distance will account for only ~10 meV spin-orbit splitting. The ab initio calculations suggest an enhancement due to Au atoms that get closer to the graphene and do not violate the sublattice symmetry.Comment: 16 pages (3 figures) + supplementary information 16 pages (14 figures

A hybrid MBE-based growth method for large-area synthesis of stacked hexagonal boron nitride/graphene heterostructures

Van der Waals heterostructures combining hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and graphene offer many potential advantages, but remain difficult to produce as continuous films over large areas. In particular, the growth of h-BN on graphene has proven to be challenging due to the inertness of the graphene surface. Here we exploit a scalable molecular beam epitaxy based method to allow both the h-BN and graphene to form in a stacked heterostructure in the favorable growth environment provided by a Ni(111) substrate. This involves first saturating a Ni film on MgO(111) with C, growing h-BN on the exposed metal surface, and precipitating the C back to the h-BN/Ni interface to form graphene. The resulting laterally continuous heterostructure is composed of a top layer of few-layer thick h-BN on an intermediate few-layer thick graphene, lying on top of Ni/MgO(111). Examinations by synchrotron-based grazing incidence diffraction, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and UV-Raman spectroscopy reveal that while the h-BN is relaxed, the lattice constant of graphene is significantly reduced, likely due to nitrogen doping. These results illustrate a different pathway for the production of h-BN/graphene heterostructures, and open a new perspective for the large-area preparation of heterosystems combining graphene and other 2D or 3D materials

Electronic structure of carbon nanostripes

Carbon nanostripes of graphene structure prepared on the stepped Ni(771) surface have been studied by angle-resolved photoemission. The electronic structure is anisotropic: parallel to the stripe direction, a graphite-type dispersion is measured, whereas the perpendicular direction displays two entangled band structures shifted in energy with respect to each other. These are experimentally identified as the microsurface-centered band structure and its umklapp scattered image caused by the superlattice

Photoemission from surface-localized structures on vicinal surfaces: Initial- or final-state superlattice effect?

Strong superlattice effects are reported on E(k(vertical bar vertical bar)) band dispersions measured by angle-resolved photoemission on W(3 3 1) and W(5 5 1), and graphene nanostripes on Ni(7 7 1). A splitting of the dispersions with reciprocal superlattice vector G = 2 pi/L is observed for a surface resonance on W(3 3 1) and W(5 5 1) and for pi-states of graphene/Ni(7 7 1). Photon-energy-dependent measurements and comparison to LEED show that electrons are confined to the one-dimensional terraces and stripes, respectively, and that the observed superlattice effects are due to diffraction in the final state of the photoemission transitions