Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory were able to theoretically calculate the mechanism by which the electronic band structure of graphene could be modified with metal atoms.
The researcher can now study the effect of added metal atoms intercalated between graphene and its silicon carbide substrate. Since these atoms are magnetic, they can also make graphene useful for spintronics applications.
RWTH Aachen University and Germany-based AMO launched a new joint research center with a focus on the science and applications of graphene and related 2D materials. The new center has five founding principal investigators, all members of the $1 billion Graphene Flagship project.
The new center will addressing the challenges of future technology including high-frequency electronics, flexible electronics, energy-efficient sensing, photonics as well as valleytronics and spintronics.
Researchers from the University of Groningen developed a device made by 2D sheets of graphene and Boron-Nitride that showed unprecedented spin transport efficiency at room temperature.
The research, funded by the European Union's $1 billion Graphene Flagship, uses the single-layer graphene as the core material. The researchers say that graphene is a great material for spin transport - but the spin in the graphene cannot be manipulated. To over come this In this device, the graphene is sandwiched between two layers of Boron Nitride and the whole structure rests on silicon.
Researchers from the University of Würzburg developed a new room-temperature 2D topological insulator material that is promising for spintronics applications.
To create this material, the researchers used a single-sheet of bismuth atomsdeposited on a silicon carbide substrate. The silicon carbide structures causes the bismuth atoms to arrange in a honeycomb structure - which resembles the structure of graphene films. The researchers call their new material "bismuthene".
Researchers from Chalmers University developed a new graphene-based room-temperature spin field-effect transistor (G-FET).
As part of the research, it was demonstrated that the spin characteristics of graphene can be electrically regulated in a controlled way, even at an ambient temperature. This structure is not only useful to make spin-logic devices - it can also be used to integrate device-level magnetic memory (MRAM) elements.
Researchers from the University of Texas in Dallas developed an all-carbon spin logic design for a switch that could be the basis of carbon spin logic devices.
The design is based on graphene nanoribbons and carbon nanotubes, which in conjunction can be used to create cascaded logic gates that are not physically linked. The communication between the gates happens via an electromagnetic wave (and does not use any physical movement of electrons), it is anticipated that communication will be much quicker - with the potential for terahertz clock speeds. The size of these logic gates will be much smaller than silicon based gates.
Researchers from the NUS discovered that manipulating the electron spin lowers the contact resistance in graphene electronics.
Graphene is an excellent conductor, but metal-graphene interfaces suffer from large electrical resistance. The researchers have shown that edga-contacted device geometries in metallic-graphene interfaces feature some of the lowest contact resistances reported to date - significantly lower than in surface-contracted interfaces. The researchers explain that this is due to the different behavior of electron spins in these geometries.
