EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Graphene's potential for spintronic applications has gained a lot of attention due to its gate tunability, high mobility and low intrinsic spin orbit coupling (SOC) strength. In recent works, researchers exploited these properties to propagate the electron spin up to 30 µm [1]. However, long communication distance is only one aspect in the search for spintronic related phenomena. Manipulating spin currents is essential to encode and process information in the spin degree of freedom. An interesting method to induce such a SOC in graphene is the controlled deposition of ad-particles [2].

Few atom clusters provide the ultimate control on the atomic scale. Gas phase clusters showcased a distinct atom-by-atom size dependence, dominated by quantum confinement effects in the electronic and structural properties. This leads to unique physico-chemical properties, such as magnetism made of atoms that form non-magnetic bulk metals [3] and metal-dielectric transitions that occur when adding a single atom [4].

Here we present the spin transport properties of cluster decorated graphene. It is found that Au$_3$ and Au$_6$ clusters deposited on graphene both reduce the spin lifetime compared to pristine graphene. However, at the same densities of deposited Au$_6$ and Au$_3$ clusters, the spin scattering rate due to the Au$_6$ cluster is significantly larger compared to Au$_3$, indicating the size-specific character of the cluster-graphene hybrid material.

[1] Z. M. Gebeyehu et al 2019 2D Mater. 6 034003

[2] K. Premasiri et al 2019 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 31 193001

[3] A. J. Cox et al Phys. Rev. Lett. 1993 71 923–926

[4] B. Von Issendorff et al Annu. 2005 Rev. Phys. Chem. 56 549–580