Polarized spin and valley transport across ferromagnetic silicene junctions

This article reviews the basic theoretical aspects of graphene, a one atom thick allotrope of carbon, with unusual two-dimensional Dirac-like electronic excitations. The Dirac electrons can be controlled by application of external electric and magnetic fields, or by altering sample geometry and/or topology. We show that the Dirac electrons behave in unusual ways in tunneling, confinement, and integer quantum Hall effect. We discuss the electronic properties of graphene stacks and show that they vary with stacking order and number of layers. Edge (surface) states in graphene are strongly dependent on the edge termination (zigzag or armchair) and affect the physical properties of nanoribbons. We also discuss how different types of disorder modify the Dirac equation leading to unusual spectroscopic and transport properties. The effects of electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions in single layer and multilayer graphene are also presented.

The specific band structure of graphene, with its unique valley structure and Dirac neutrality point separating hole states from electron states has led to the observation of new electronic transport phenomena such as anomalously quantized Hall effects, absence of weak localization and the existence of a minimum conductivity. In addition to dissipative transport also supercurrent transport has already been observed. It has also been suggested that graphene might be a promising material for spintronics and related applications, such as the realization of spin qubits, due to the low intrinsic spin orbit interaction, as well as the low hyperfine interaction of the electron spins with the carbon nuclei. As a first step in the direction of graphene spintronics and spin qubits we report the observation of spin transport, as well as Larmor spin precession over micrometer long distances using single graphene layer based field effect transistors. The non-local spin valve geometry was used, employing four terminal contact geometries with ferromagnetic cobalt electrodes, which make contact to the graphene sheet through a thin oxide layer. We observe clear bipolar (changing from positive to negative sign) spin signals which reflect the magnetization direction of all 4 electrodes, indicating that spin coherence extends underneath all 4 contacts. No significant changes in the spin signals occur between 4.2K, 77K and room temperature. From Hanle type spin precession measurements we extract a spin relaxation length between 1.5 and 2 micron at room temperature, only weakly dependent on charge density, which is varied from n~0 at the Dirac neutrality point to n = 3.6 10^16/m^2. The spin polarization of the ferromagnetic contacts is calculated from the measurements to be around 10%.