Graphene and cobalt team up in new electromagnetic devices

Spin-orbitronic is one of the latest technologies to encode digital information. This technology, which provides high processing speed, high capacity for data storage, and very low energy consumption, can be applied in certain materials to generate magnetic configurations that are very stable, but can still be controlled and moved quickly with small electrical currents.

Now, a team led by Graphene Flagship partner IMDEA Nanociencia has developed a new methodology to prepare graphene spin-orbitronic systems. The resulting structures are considered very promising for future 'spin-orbitronic' storage devices.

Spin-orbitronic exploits both the charge of the electron (electronics) and its spin (spintronics) and the interaction of the spin with its orbital motion, offering a multitude of properties that are relevant to magnetism.

The new devices are made of graphene films – a single atom thick graphite layer – placed on ferromagnetic material: cobalt, arranged around a platinum layer with a certain crystallographic orientation. The results were recently published in Nano Letters ("Unraveling Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya Interaction and Chiral Nature of Graphene/Cobalt Interface").