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Materials

Probing Graphene’s Magnetism In Detail

Study reports new method for rendering graphene magnetic, advancing prospects for spintronics

by Mitch Jacoby
November 11, 2013 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 91, Issue 45

Graphene’s outstanding mechanical, electronic, thermal, and other properties are expected to yield applications in electronics, advanced materials, and other areas. Earlier this year, researchers demonstrated that the material could be rendered magnetic, thereby extending graphene’s potential applications to spintronics. That field aims to make communications, computing, and other devices that merge electron spin, a magnetic property, with properties of conventional electronics. Yet graphene’s magnetism and methods to prepare magnetic graphene remain largely unexplored. Now, a team led by University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineer Jeongmin Hong reports that a simple nitrophenyl functionalization method can be used to prepare large samples of graphene that retain their magnetic nature even at elevated temperatures (ACS Nano 2013, DOI: 10.1021/nn403939r). The team applied a battery of analytical methods, including nanoscale microscopy techniques, to avoid the large-scale averaging of earlier measurements. Also unlike earlier studies, magnetism in the new work is not associated with graphene defects, a finding likely to enhance sample reproducibility.

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