AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Graphene Focus Topic Wednesday Sessions
       Session GR+EM+MS+TF+MI-WeM

Invited Paper GR+EM+MS+TF+MI-WeM3
Spintronics in Graphene Based Nanostructures

Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 8:40 am, Room Brazos

Session: Graphene and Carbon-based Devices
Presenter: J. Fernández-Rossier, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Correspondent: Click to Email

Spintronics in graphene has received attention from two complementary points of view. On one side, the small spin orbit coupling and nuclear spin density suggest that graphene should have very long spin relaxation and decoherence times, which would make it suitable for long distance spin transport and, eventually, for spin-based quantum computing. Although small, spin orbit interaction turns graphene into a spin hall insulator, at very small temperatures, so that the edges of graphene should carry spontaneous spin currents. Independently of the above, the zigzag edges of graphene nanostructures, like graphene ribbons and islands, are predicted to present ferromagnetic spin order due to electron electron coupling. In this talk I will discuss the properties of graphene nanostructures when both the spin-orbit coupling and the Coulomb interactions are included. I will show how the combined action of spontaneous spin order and spin orbit coupling results in persistent charge currents flow in the edges of a variety of graphene nanostructures.