One of the goals is to achieve pure spin current in graphene. “Pure spin current is a spin current with zero charge current, which means electrons with different spins travel toward opposite directions,” K S Chan tells PhysOrg.com via email. Chan is a professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Working with Zijing Lin, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, and, Qingtian Zhang, a student of the CityU-USTC joint Ph.D. program, Chan studied adiabatic pumping in graphene as a way to generate spin current. Their work is published in Applied Physics Letters: “Spin current generation by adiabatic pumping in monolayer graphene.”
“Spin current is an important tool of studying spins in graphene,” Chan explains. “With spin current, you can create polarization in a particular region, and you can study the behavior of the spin in that particular region.” Chan points out that spin current is important in the development of a graphene quantum computer. Additionally, he points out that graphene is the material of choice for spintronics, which some hope will be able to replace electronics.
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