EurekAlert September 11, 2019
At the edges of graphene bilayers atoms can exist in a quantum spin Hall state (QSH) depending on spin-orbit coupling (SOC). While the QSH state is allowed for ‘intrinsic’ SOC, it is destroyed by ‘Rashba’ SOC. Researchers in India have shown that the interaction between the two types of SOC are responsible for variations in the ways in which graphene bilayers conduct electricity. For nanoribbons of bilayer graphene, whose edge atoms are arranged in zigzag patterns, the bands of electron energies which are allowed and forbidden are significantly different to those found in monolayer graphene. This conduction sensitivity to the states of edge atoms shows that graphene bilayers could be particularly useful for spintronics applications…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE