Pseudospin-driven spin relaxation mechanism in graphene
Dinh, Van Tuan (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Ortmann, Frank (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Soriano, David (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Valenzuela, Sergio O. (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Roche, Stephan (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Física

Date:	2014
Abstract:	The prospect of transporting spin information over long distances in graphene, possible because of its small intrinsic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and vanishing hyperfine interaction, has stimulated intense research exploring spintronics applications. However, measured spin relaxation times are orders of magnitude smaller than initially predicted, while the main physical process for spin dephasing and its charge-density and disorder dependences remain unconvincingly described by conventional mechanisms. Here, we unravel a spin relaxation mechanism for non-magnetic samples that follows from an entanglement between spin and pseudospin driven by random SOC, unique to graphene. The mixing between spin and pseudospin-related Berrya's phases results in fast spin dephasing even when approaching the ballistic limit, with increasing relaxation times away from the Dirac point, as observed experimentally. The SOC can be caused by adatoms, ripples or even the substrate, suggesting novel spin manipulation strategies based on the pseudospin degree of freedom.
Grants:	European Commission 604391 European Commission 306652 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MAT2010-18065 Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MAT2012-33911
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Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Subject:	Electronic properties and materials ; Graphene ; Spintronics
Published in:	Nature Physics, Vol. 10, Núm. 11 (September 2014) , p. 857-863, ISSN 1745-2481

DOI: 10.1038/nphys3083

Post-print 15 p, 378.5 KB

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Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles