Juan Jose Palacios

Spintronics with graphene

Abstract

Over the past few years graphene has become one the most studied systems in nanoelectronics. The fact that nanostructured 
graphene (graphene nanoribbons, graphene dots, voids in graphene, etc.) can present magnetic order also makes it of interest for spintronics applications. 
I will discuss how the imbalance in the number of atoms belonging to the two graphene sublattices, the existence of zero-energy states, and the total and 
local magnetic moments are intimately related [1]. Magnetism thus becomes naturally associated with graphene nanoribbons terminated by zig-zag edges and 
nanoribbons with vacancies and adsorbates such as H, which opens interesting possibilities in spintronics for these systems [2,3]. With the help of the 
quantum transport package ALACANT [4], we explore various possibilities for the use of graphene nanoribbons as all-carbon based magnetoresistive devices.