AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    In Situ Spectroscopy and Microscopy Focus Topic Thursday Sessions
       Session IS+EN+SP+SS-ThA

Invited Paper IS+EN+SP+SS-ThA7
In Situ Studies of Strain Evolution in Graphene on Ir(111) and Interplay with Magnetic Few Layer Cobalt Films

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 4:00 pm, Room 203 B

Session: In Situ Studies of Electrochemical Interfaces and Processes
Presenter: A. N'Diaye, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
Graphene's transport properties make it a promising component of spintronic applications and logic circuitry operating at gigahertz frequencies or as a support for nanocatalysts. Understanding graphene's interplay with the substrate is key to understanding and tailoring its properties. Here we show how thermal compression leads to few nanometer wide and micrometer long elongated wrinkles on singe layer epitaxial graphene on Ir(111) to partially relieve compressive strain in the graphene layer. The strain relief process can be followed in-situ with spot profile analysis low energy electron diffraction (SPA-LEED) and low energy electron microscopy (LEEM). We show that micrometer wide regions of graphene slide over substrate and that the residual strain is spatially inhomogeneous. An other example for the interplay of graphene with its support is the enhancement of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in thin Cobalt films intercalated between graphene and Ir(111). We use spin-polarized LEEM (SPLEEM) to study the thickness induced spin reorientation transition in the graphene/Co/Ir(111) system and produce a phase diagram of an in-plane state, an out of-plane state, and a partially canted state. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, by the French ANR contract ANR-2010-BLAN-1019-NMGEM and by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.