Versatile Method for Preparing Two-Dimensional Metal Dihalides.

Ever since the ground-breaking isolation of graphene, numerous two-dimensional (2D) materials have emerged with 2D metal dihalides gaining significant attention due to their intriguing electrical and magnetic properties. In this study, we introduce an innovative approach anhydrous solvent-induced recrystallization of bulk powders to obtain crystals of metal dihalides (MX, with M = Cu, Ni, Co and X = Br, Cl, I), which can be exfoliated to 2D flakes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method using CuBr as an example, which forms large layered crystals.

Exploring room temperature spin transport under band gap opening in bilayer graphene.

We study the room-temperature electrical control of charge and spin transport in high-quality bilayer graphene, fully encapsulated with hBN and contacted via 1D spin injectors. We show that spin transport in this device architecture is measurable at room temperature and its spin transport parameters can be modulated by opening of a band gap via a perpendicular displacement field. The modulation of the spin current is dominated by the control of the spin relaxation time with displacement field, demonstrating the basic operation of a spin-based field-effect transistor.

Tunable Spin Injection in High-Quality Graphene with One-Dimensional Contacts.

Spintronics involves the development of low-dimensional electronic systems with potential use in quantum-based computation. In graphene, there has been significant progress in improving spin transport characteristics by encapsulation and reducing impurities, but the influence of standard two-dimensional (2D) tunnel contacts, via pinholes and doping of the graphene channel, remains difficult to eliminate. Here, we report the observation of spin injection and tunable spin signal in fully encapsulated graphene, enabled by van der Waals heterostructures with one-dimensional (1D) contacts.

Quantum Rescaling, Domain Metastability, and Hybrid Domain-Walls in 2D CrI Magnets.

Higher-order exchange interactions and quantum effects are widely known to play an important role in describing the properties of low-dimensional magnetic compounds. Here, the recently discovered 2D van der Waals (vdW) CrI is identified as a quantum non-Heisenberg material with properties far beyond an Ising magnet as initially assumed. It is found that biquadratic exchange interactions are essential to quantitatively describe the magnetism of CrI but quantum rescaling corrections are required to reproduce its thermal properties.

Independent Geometrical Control of Spin and Charge Resistances in Curved Spintronics.

Spintronic devices operating with pure spin currents represent a new paradigm in nanoelectronics, with a higher energy efficiency and lower dissipation as compared to charge currents. This technology, however, will be viable only if the amount of spin current diffusing in a nanochannel can be tuned on demand while guaranteeing electrical compatibility with other device elements, to which it should be integrated in high-density three-dimensional architectures. Here, we address these two crucial milestones and demonstrate that pure spin currents can effectively propagate in metallic nanochannels with a three-dimensional curved geometry.

Magnetoresistance in Co-hBN-NiFe Tunnel Junctions Enhanced by Resonant Tunneling through Single Defects in Ultrathin hBN Barriers.

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a prototypical high-quality two-dimensional insulator and an ideal material to study tunneling phenomena, as it can be easily integrated in vertical van der Waals devices. For spintronic devices, its potential has been demonstrated both for efficient spin injection in lateral spin valves and as a barrier in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). Here we reveal the effect of point defects inevitably present in mechanically exfoliated hBN on the tunnel magnetoresistance of Co-hBN-NiFe MTJs.

Efficient Injection and Detection of Out-of-Plane Spins via the Anomalous Spin Hall Effect in Permalloy Nanowires.

We report a novel mechanism for the electrical injection and detection of out-of-plane spin accumulation via the anomalous spin Hall effect (ASHE), where the direction of the spin accumulation can be controlled by manipulating the magnetization of the ferromagnet. This mechanism is distinct from the spin Hall effect (SHE), where the spin accumulation is created along a fixed direction parallel to an interface. We demonstrate this unique property of the ASHE in nanowires made of permalloy (Py) to inject and detect out-of-plane spin accumulation in a magnetic insulator, yttrium iron garnet (YIG).

Edge currents shunt the insulating bulk in gapped graphene.

An energy gap can be opened in the spectrum of graphene reaching values as large as 0.2 eV in the case of bilayers. However, such gaps rarely lead to the highly insulating state expected at low temperatures.

Direct electronic measurement of Peltier cooling and heating in graphene.

Thermoelectric effects allow the generation of electrical power from waste heat and the electrical control of cooling and heating. Remarkably, these effects are also highly sensitive to the asymmetry in the density of states around the Fermi energy and can therefore be exploited as probes of distortions in the electronic structure at the nanoscale. Here we consider two-dimensional graphene as an excellent nanoscale carbon material for exploring the interaction between electronic and thermal transport phenomena, by presenting a direct and quantitative measurement of the Peltier component to electronic cooling and heating in graphene.

Air-stable transport in graphene-contacted, fully encapsulated ultrathin black phosphorus-based field-effect transistors.

The presence of direct bandgap and high mobility in semiconductor few-layer black phosphorus offers an attractive prospect for using this material in future two-dimensional electronic devices. However, creation of barrier-free contacts which is necessary to achieve high performance in black phosphorus-based devices is challenging and currently limits their potential for applications. Here, we characterize fully encapsulated ultrathin (down to bilayer) black phosphorus field effect transistors fabricated under inert gas conditions by utilizing graphene as source-drain electrodes and boron nitride as an encapsulation layer.

Spin-dependent quantum interference in nonlocal graphene spin valves.

Up to date, all spin transport experiments on graphene were done in a semiclassical regime, disregarding quantum transport properties such as phase coherence and interference. Here we show that in a quantum coherent graphene nanostructure the nonlocal voltage is strongly modulated. Using nonlocal measurements, we separate the signal in spin-dependent and spin-independent contributions.

Spin heat accumulation induced by tunneling from a ferromagnet.

An electric current from a ferromagnet into a nonmagnetic material can induce a spin-dependent electron temperature. Here, it is shown that this spin heat accumulation, when created by tunneling from a ferromagnet, produces a non-negligible voltage signal that is comparable to that due to the coexisting electrical spin accumulation and can give a different Hanle spin precession signature. The effect is governed by the spin polarization of the Peltier coefficient of the tunnel contact, its Seebeck coefficient, and the spin heat resistance of the nonmagnetic material, which is related to the electrical spin resistance by a spin-Wiedemann-Franz law.

Spin transport in high-quality suspended graphene devices.

We measure spin transport in high mobility suspended graphene (μ ≈ 10(5)cm(2)/(V s)), obtaining a (spin) diffusion coefficient of 0.1 m(2)/s and giving a lower bound on the spin relaxation time (τ(s) ≈ 150 ps) and spin relaxation length (λ(s) = 4.7 μm) for intrinsic graphene.