Graphene - Page 7

Researchers from UC Berkeley, Florida International University (FIU) and the Georgia Institute of Technology demonstrated for the first time the presence of magnetic properties in graphene nanostructures at room temperature. This could lead towards Spintronics applications.

To achieve this they functionalized the graphene with nitrophenyl. The researchers thus confirmed the presence of magnetic order in nanoparticle-functionalized graphene. The graphene was epitaxially grown at Georgia Tech, chemically functionalized at UC Riverside and studied at FIU and UC Berkeley.

Graphene is a promising Spintronics material, and a lot of research is dedicated to this new material. Detecting the electronic spin state of the material is not easy. Now researcher from Japan's Advanced Science Research Center, the Atomic Energy Agency and the National Institute for Materials Science developed a way to do it using a spin-polarized metastable helium beam.

The researchers also found out that in conduction electrons of graphene contacted to nickel, spin polarization occurs with the same orientation as the spin of the nickel.

Researchers from Puerto Rico and China discovered that ethylene (C₂H₄) is the ideal terminal for zigzag graphene nanoribbons (zGNRs) - if you want to preserve the edge magnetism. This new research paves the way towards using zGNRs for Spintronics applications.;

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) facility are developing a new type of spin-resolved ARPES (angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy) tool.

Graphene is one of the leading candidates for Spintronics materials, and now researchers from Manchester University report on a new breakthrough - they managed to create elementary magnetic moments in graphene and then switch them on and off. This is the first time magnetism itself has been toggled, rather than the magnetization direction being reversed. They say this is a major breakthrough on the way towards graphene based Spintronics transistor-like devices.

The new research shows that electrons in graphene condense around vacancies ("holes" in the graphene sheet created when some carbon atoms are removed) - and create small "electronic cloud". These clouds carry a spin, and the researchers managed to dissipate and then condense back those clouds. So these clouds can be used to store information in graphene. To read them, one can use an electric current, or a spin flow.

Researchers from Spain have managed to create magnetic graphene, basically they developed a hybrid graphene surface that behaves like a magnet. This may enable graphene-based Spintronic devices.

The researchers grew a graphene sheet on a ruthernium single crystal substrate. Then they evaporated TCNQ (tetracyano-p-quinodimethane) molecules on the graphene surface. The TCNQ molecule acquired long-range magnetic order. While the graphene itself did not interact with the TCNQ molecules, it permitted a highly efficient charge transfer between the substrate (the ruthernium crystal) and the TCNQ.

Several experiments have shown that graphene has as much as 1000 times lower spin-relaxation time than predicted. Now researchers from the University of British Columbia have discovered that magnetic defects may be behind this.

The Semiconductor Research Corporation, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a $28 million five-year grant to open the Center for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces, and Novel Architectures, or C-SPIN. This is a multi-university and industry research center that aims to develop technologies for spin-based computing and memory systems. C-SPIN's research areas include perpendicular magnetic materials, spin channel materials (including topological insulators, monolayer MoS2 and graphene), spintronic interface engineering, spin devices and interconnects and spintronic circuits and architectures.

University partners include the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, MIT, Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Riverside. Industry partners include IBM, Applied materials, Intel, Texas Instruments and Micron.

Researchers from Germany, Russia and the USA managed to the conduction electrons' spin-orbit coupling in graphene by a factor of 10,000. Such a device could could enable a spintronics switch that is controlled by a small electric field. The switch will include two perpendicular spin filters that will be controlled by the electric field.

To develop this, the researchers placed graphene on a nickel substrate in which atoms are separated by the same distance as the graphene's hexagonal meshes. They then deposited gold atoms on the device which ended up between the graphene and nickel sheets.

Researchers from the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) discovered a way to use graphene as an extremely thin "tunnel barrier" to conduction. This could be very useful for Spintronics devices. The researchers have shown that graphene can serve as an excellent tunnel barrier when current is directed perpendicular to the plane of carbon atoms. The spin polarization of the current is also preserved by the tunnel barrier.

The researchers replaced the normally used oxide barriers (which introduce defects into the system and feature too high a resistance) with graphene - which is defect resistant and chemically inert and stable.