Graphene is at the core of the largest European research initiative to date, The Graphene Flagship, but within this megaproject there are also studies of other two-dimensional materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD). The interesting properties of TMDs can be applied in electronics, spintronics and a third field: valleytronics, as the physicist Dr Lucian Covaci of the University of Antwerp explains in this interview.
Graphene has the potential to create the next-generation of electronics currently limited to sci-fi. Faster transistors; semiconductors; bendable phones and other electronics.
The authors report on fundamental aspects of spin dynamics in heterostructures of graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). By using realistic models derived from first principles they computed the spin lifetime anisotropy, defined as the ratio of lifetimes for spins pointing out of the graphene plane to those pointing in the plane.