Electronic transport in single or a few layers of graphene is the subject of intense interest at present. The specific band structure of graphene, with its unique valley structure and Dirac neutrality point separating hole states from electron states, has led to the observation of new electronic transport phenomena such as anomalously quantized Hall effects, absence of weak localization and the existence of a minimum conductivity. In addition to dissipative transport, supercurrent transport has also been observed. Graphene might also be a promising material for spintronics and related applications, such as the realization of spin qubits, owing to the low intrinsic spin orbit interaction, as well as the low hyperfine interaction of the electron spins with the carbon nuclei. Here we report the observation of spin transport, as well as Larmor spin precession, over micrometre-scale distances in single graphene layers. The 'non-local' spin valve geometry was used in these experiments, employing four-terminal contact geometries with ferromagnetic cobalt electrodes making contact with the graphene sheet through a thin oxide layer. We observe clear bipolar (changing from positive to negative sign) spin signals that reflect the magnetization direction of all four electrodes, indicating that spin coherence extends underneath all of the contacts. No significant changes in the spin signals occur between 4.2 K, 77 K and room temperature. We extract a spin relaxation length between 1.5 and 2 mum at room temperature, only weakly dependent on charge density. The spin polarization of the ferromagnetic contacts is calculated from the measurements to be around ten per cent.

We investigate photochromic molecular switches that are self-assembled on gold. We use two experimental techniques; namely, the mechanically controllable break-junction technique to measure electronic transport, and UV/Vis spectroscopy to measure absorption. We observe switching of the molecules from the conducting to the insulating state when illuminated with visible light (lambda=546 nm), in spite of the gold surface plasmon absorption present around this wavelength. However, we fail to observe the reverse process which should occur upon illumination with UV light (lambda=313 nm). We attribute this to quenching of the excited state of the molecule in the open form by the presence of gold.

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Electronic spin transport in graphene field-effect transistors Popinciuc, M.; Jozsa, C.; Zomer, P. J.; Tombros, N.; Veligura, A.; Jonkman, H. T.; van Wees, B. J. Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Spin transport experiments in graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms ordered in a honeycomb lattice, indicate spin-relaxation times that are significantly shorter than the theoretical predictions. We investigate experimentally whether these short spin-relaxation times are due to extrinsic factors, such as spin relaxation caused by low impedance contacts, enhanced spin-flip processes at the device edges, or the presence of an aluminum oxide layer on top of graphene in some samples. Lateral spin valve devices using a field-effect transistor geometry allowed for the investigation of the spin relaxation as a function of the charge density, going continuously from metallic hole to electron conduction ͑charge densities of n ϳ 10 12 cm −2 ͒ via the Dirac charge neutrality point ͑n ϳ 0͒. The results are quantitatively described by a one-dimensional spin-diffusion model where the spin relaxation via the contacts is taken into account. Spin valve experiments for various injector-detector separations and spin precession experiments reveal that the longitudinal ͑T 1 ͒ and the transversal ͑T 2 ͒ relaxation times are similar. The anisotropy of the spin-relaxation times ʈ and Ќ , when the spins are injected parallel or perpendicular to the graphene plane, indicates that the effective spin-orbit fields do not lie exclusively in the two-dimensional graphene plane. Furthermore, the proportionality between the spinrelaxation time and the momentum-relaxation time indicates that the spin-relaxation mechanism is of the Elliott-Yafet type. For carrier mobilities of 2 ϫ 10 3 -5ϫ 10 3 cm 2 / V s and for graphene flakes of 0.1-2 m in width, we found spin-relaxation times on the order of 50-200 ps, times which appear not to be determined by the extrinsic factors mentioned above.

Linear scaling between momentum and spin scattering in graphene Jozsa, C.; Maassen, T.; Popinciuc, M.; Zomer, P. J.; Veligura, A.; Jonkman, H. T.; van Wees, B. J.