Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 11: Graphene: Spin-orbit interaction (jointly with DS, HL, MA, and TT)
O 11.1: Talk
Monday, March 11, 2013, 11:30–11:45, H17
Impurity-induced spin relaxation time in graphene from first principles — •Dmitry Fedorov1, Martin Gradhand2, Sergey Ostanin1, Igor Maznichenko3, Arthur Ernst1, Jaroslav Fabian4, and Ingrid Mertig3,1 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle, Germany — 2H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TL, United Kingdom — 3Martin-Luther-Universität Halle, Institut für Physik, 06099 Halle, Germany — 4Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany
The spin relaxation time of conduction electrons in graphene caused by carbon and silicon impurities is studied by means of our ab initio approach, which was recently developed for bulk systems [1] and adapted now for the film geometry. It is found that both the momentum and spin relaxation times are extremely sensitive to the position of the impurities. We show that adatoms provide spin-flip rates 4 to 5 orders of magnitude larger than in-plane impurities. Our results strongly support the adatom-induced extrinsic mechanism of the experimentally observed spin relaxation in graphene [2].
[1] M. Gradhand et al., PRB 81, 020403(R) (2010)
[2] N. Tombros et al., Nature 448, 571 (2007)