Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 82: Graphene IV

O 82.1: Talk

Friday, March 26, 2010, 11:15–11:30, H31

Spin-Splitting of Graphene/Au/SiC investigated with Spin- and Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy — •Isabella Gierz¹, Fabian Meier², Bartosz Slomski², Jan Hugo Dil², Jürg Osterwalder³, Christian R. Ast¹, and Klaus Kern^1,4 — ¹Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany — ²Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland — ³Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland — ⁴Institut de Physique des Nanostructures, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Due to its high carrier mobility graphene is a promising candidate for electronics applications. For possible applications in the field of spintronics, however, a spin-splitting of the graphene band structure is required. In order to lift the spin degeneracy in graphene we exploit the Rashba-Bychkov effect where the presence of heavy elements with a strong atomic spin-orbit interaction in a symmetry-broken environment leads to a spin-splitting of the two-dimensional band structure on a crystal surface. The intrinsic spin-orbit interaction of carbon is negligible but [1] predicts that defects, i.e. local distortions of the graphene lattice from sp² to sp³ hybridization, lead to a strong enhancement of the spin-orbit coupling. Furthermore, we have shown recently that it is possible to intercalate epitaxial graphene on SiC with gold atoms, thereby adding heavy atoms to the system. We present spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements on pristine epitaxial graphene as well as gold intercalated graphene on SiC.

[1] A. H. Castro Neto et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 103, 026804 (2009)