Magnetism of carbon-based materials

Two porous carbon-based samples doped with Au and Co are investigated. The neutron diffraction study reveals an amorphous structure of both samples. The Co-doped sample exhibits a long-range ferromagnetic (FM) ordering at 2.6 K. The NMR investigations demonstrate, that the samples are obtained with a partial carbonization of initial aromatic compounds and do not reach a state of glassy carbon. The magnetization, longitudinal nonlinear response to a weak ac field and electron ...

The magnetic properties of carbon materials are at present the focus of an intense research effort in physics, chemistry and materials science due to their potential applications in spintronics and quantum computations. Although the presence of spins in open-shell nanographenes has been recently confirmed, the ability to control magnetic coupling sign has remained elusive, but the most desirable. Here, we demonstrate an effective approach of engineering magnetic ground states...

Recently, there have appeared theoretical works on the magnetic properties of graphene and graphene nanoribbons envisaging possible spin-based applications along with fundamental scientific insight. The theoretical efforts, however, appear not paralleled by experimental investigation to test magnetic properties. Yet, room temperature ferromagnetism (RTFM) has recently been experimentally reported in graphene (G-600) [Nano. Letters 9, 220 (2009)], the origin of which remains s...

We report an element-specific investigation of electronic and magnetic properties of the graphene/Ni(111) system. Using magnetic circular dichroism, the occurrence of an induced magnetic moment of the carbon atoms in the graphene layer aligned parallel to the Ni 3d magnetization is observed. We attribute this magnetic moment to the strong hybridization between C $\pi$ and Ni 3d valence band states. The net magnetic moment of carbon in the graphene layer is estimated to be in ...

In the last three decades, zero-dimensional, one-dimensional, and two-dimensional carbon nanomaterials (i.e., fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, respectively) have attracted significant attention from the scientific community due to their unique electronic, optical, thermal, mechanical, and chemical properties. While early work showed that these properties could enable high performance in selected applications, issues surrounding structural inhomogeneity and imprecis...

Discoveries of graphene and graphane possessing unique electronic and magnetic properties offer a bright future for carbon based electronics, with future prospects of superseding silicon in the semiconductor industry.

Magnetism in nanographenes (also know as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs) are studied with first principles density functional calculations. We find that an antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase appears as the PAH reaches a certain size. This AFM phase in PAHs has the same origin as the one in infinitely long zigzag-edged graphene nanoribbons, namely, from the localized electronic state at the zigzag edge. The smallest PAH still having an AFM ground state is identified. Wit...

The ground and a few excited states of the carbon atom in external uniform magnetic fields are calculated by means of our 2D mesh Hartree-Fock method for field strengths ranging from zero up to 2.35 10^9 T. With increasing field strength the ground state undergoes six transitions involving seven different electronic configurations which belong to three groups with different spin projections S_z=-1,-2,-3. For weak fields the ground state configuration arises from the field-fre...

We review our recent work on magnetic properties of graphite and related carbon materials. The results demonstrate that a structural disorder, topological defects, as well as adsorbed foreign atoms can be responsible for the occurrence of both ferromagnetic and superconducting patches in graphitic structures.

We provide evidence that high-pressure high-temperature (2.5 GPa and 1040 K) treatment of mixtures of iron with fullerene powders leads to the complete transformation of iron into iron carbide Fe$_3$C. The comparison of the magnetic properties (Curie temperature and magnetic moment) of the here studied samples and those for the ferromagnetic polymer Rh-C$_{60}$ indicates that the main ferromagnetic signal reported in those samples is due to Fe$_3$C and not related to the ferr...