title: Atomic-Scale Interfacial Magnetism in Fe/Graphene Heterojunction.
abstract: Successful spin injection into graphene makes it a competitive contender in the race to become a key material for quantum computation, or the spin-operation-based data processing and sensing. Engineering ferromagnetic metal (FM)/graphene heterojunctions is one of the most promising avenues to realise it, however, their interface magnetism remains an open question up to this day. In any proposed FM/graphene spintronic devices, the best opportunity for spin transport could only be achieved where no magnetic dead layer exists at the FM/graphene interface. Here we present a comprehensive study of the epitaxial Fe/graphene interface by means of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The experiment has been performed using a specially designed FM1/FM2/graphene structure that to a large extent restores the realistic case of the proposed graphene-based transistors. We have quantitatively observed a reduced but still sizable magnetic moments of the epitaxial Fe ML on graphene, which is well resembled by simulations and can be attributed to the strong hybridization between the Fe 3dz2 and the C 2pz orbitals and the sp-orbital-like behavior of the Fe 3d electrons due to the presence of graphene.
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Centre (YNJC) for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Spintronics and Nanodevice Laboratory, Department of Electronics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
authors.forename: W Q
authors.initials: WQ
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: W Y
authors.initials: WY
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Centre (YNJC) for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: F Q
authors.initials: FQ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Spintronics and Nanodevice Laboratory, Department of Electronics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
authors.forename: Q M
authors.initials: QM
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Diamond Light Source, Didcot OX11 0DE, UK.
authors.forename: G van der
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Laan
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Centre (YNJC) for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.|Spintronics and Nanodevice Laboratory, Department of Electronics, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
authors.forename: Y B
authors.initials: YB
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.|Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Q X
authors.initials: QX
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: York-Nanjing Joint Centre (YNJC) for Spintronics and Nanoengineering, School of Electronics Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang