Researchers from ICN2 and Imec managed to demonstrate the longest spin lifetime and relaxation length ever seen in a graphene sheet.
The researchers used CVD graphene, grown on a platinum foil. By optimizing several standard processes, the researchers managed to reduce the impurity level of the graphene.
The Graphene Flagship has announced a call out for new industrial partners to bring specific industrial and technology transfer competences or capabilities that complement the present GF consortium in the next core project (Core 3).
The Graphene Flagship is looking for companies with specific expertise - for example MRAM tools developers to leverage solutions for graphene-spintronic stacks, developers of graphene related materials based laser systems and instrumentations for coherent Raman imaging, makers of graphene-based fibers, yarns and textiles, automotive companies with expertise in fuel-cells, industrial graphene-based supercapacitors makers and more.
The EU Graphene Flagship has published its graphene application roadmap, showing when the flagship expects different graphene applications to mature and enter the market.
As can be seen in the roadmap above (click here for a larger image), the first applications that are being commercialized now are applications such as composite functional coatings, graphene batteries, low-cost printable electronics (based on graphene inks), photodetectors and biosensors.
Graphene Flagship researchers produced graphene-based spintronics devices that utilize both electron charge and spin at room temperature. Demonstrating the spin’s feasibility for bridging distances of up to several micrometres, these results may open the door to new possibilities for integrating information-processing and storage in a single chip.
The Graphene Flagship program recognizes the potential of spintronics devices made from graphene-related materials. Researchers from different universities successfully showed that it is possible to manipulate graphene’s spin properties in a controlled manner at room temperature. These results inspire new directions in the development of spin-logic devices and quantum computing. “With miniaturization a major driving force behind the electronics industry, graphene opens new possibilities for compacting spin-logic operations with magnetic memory elements in a single platform,” notes Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Research Professor Stephan Roche, who has been leading the Graphene Flagships Spintronics Work Package since its inception.
Researchers at EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), along with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and other partners, have succeeded in precisely controlling the properties of graphene nano-ribbons (GNRs) by specifically varying their shape. This can be used to generate specific local quantum states, and could in the future be used for precise nano-transistors or possibly even quantum computing.
The team has shown that if the width of a narrow graphene nano-ribbon changes, in this case from seven to nine atoms, a special zone is created at the transition: because the electronic properties of the two areas differ in a special, topological way, a "protected" and thus very robust new quantum state is created in the transition zone. This local electronic quantum state can be used as a basic component to produce tailor-made semiconductors, metals or insulators - and perhaps even as a component in quantum computers.