Creating magnetic clouds in graphene and switching them on and off

A University of Manchester team led by Dr. Irina Grigorieva has discovered how to create elementary magnetic moments in graphene and then switch them on and off, opening a new avenue towards electronics with very low energy consumption.

This is the first time magnetism itself has been toggled, rather than the magnetization direction being reversed.

Grigorieva and her team have shown that the magnetic clouds can be controllably dissipated and then condensed back. “This breakthrough allows us to work towards transistor-like devices in which information is written down by switching graphene between its magnetic and non-magnetic states. These states can be read out either in the conventional manner by pushing an electric current through or, even better, by using a spin flow. Such transistors have been a holy grail of spintronics.”

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=10201