Recently, Prof. Wei Han at Peking University published an invited review article of graphene spintronics, in the collaboration with Prof. Roland Kawakami at the Ohio State University (USA), Dr. Martin Gmitra and Prof. Jaroslav Fabian at University of Regensburg (Germany). Spintronics aims to utilize the spin degree freedom of electrons for novel information storage and logic devices. There has been great interest in spin logic devices for high speed, low power operation, and spin transistors for reconfigurable logic. For this purpose, a major challenge is developing a suitable spin transport channel with long spin lifetime and long distance spin propagation.

Graphene is a very promising spin channel material due to its high electron mobility, gate tunable carrier concentration and the achievement of room temperature spin transport with long spin diffusion lengths of several micrometers. This review paper first discusses the experimental and theoretical state-of-art concerning spin injection and transport, defect-induced magnetic moments, spin-orbit coupling and spin relaxation in graphene. It also presents the potential application of graphene spintronics such as spin transistors and spin logic devices. Furthermore, this paper also outlooks the development of graphene hybrid structures and alternative 2D materials for new spin dependent physical properties and novel devices due to enhanced spin-orbit and exchange interactions.

This article was published on line in Nature Nanotechnology on Oct 6th, 2014. For more information, please refer to: Wei Han, Roland K. Kawakami, Martin Gmitra, and Jaroslav Fabian, Nature Nanotechnology 9, (2014) 794-807 (DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2014.214).

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