Graphene is a candidate for next generation spintronics devices exploiting its long spin transport length and high carrier mobility. Besides, when put in interaction with a ferromagnet, it may become an active building block, as suggested by recent surface science studies revealing few tenth of a Bohr magneton magnetic moments held by carbon atoms in graphene on iron, and a Rashba spin-orbit splitting reaching about 10 meV in graphene on a high atomic number element such as gold. The extent to which graphene may influence the properties, e.g. magnetic ones, of the materials contacted to it was barely addressed thus far. High quality hybrid systems composed of graphene in contact with magnetic thin layers or nanoclusters are playgrounds for exploring both aspects, the manipulation of the properties of graphene by interaction with other species, and vice versa. In graphene contacted to ultra-thin ferromagnetic layers for instance, strong graphene/ferromagnet interface effects could be employed in the view of manipulating the magnetization in the ferromagnet. The recently discovered close-to-perfect self-organization of nanoclusters on graphene, provides a way to probe magnetic interaction between clusters, possibly mediated by graphene. Three high quality hybrid systems relying on graphene prepared by chemical vapor deposition on the (111) surface of iridium have been developed under ultra-high vacuum (UHV): cobalt ultra-thin and flat films deposited on top of graphene, and intercalated at moderate temperature between graphene and its substrate, and self-organized cobalt- and iron-rich nanoclusters on the 2.5 nm-periodicity moiré between graphene and Ir(111). Prior to these systems, 10 nm-thick Ir(111) single-crystal thin films on sapphire were developed: they were latter employed as a substrate replacing bulk Ir(111) single-crystals usually employed. This new substrate opens the route to multi-technique characterizations, especially ex situ ones which were little employed thus far for studying graphene/metal systems prepared under UHV. Using a combination of in situ surface science techniques (scanning tunneling microscopy, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism, spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy, auger electron spectroscopy, reflection high-energy electron diffraction) and ex situ probes (x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, MOKE magnetometry) the structural, vibrational, electronic, and magnetic properties of the three new graphene hybrid systems were characterized and confronted to first-principle calculations. Several striking features were unveiled. The interface between graphene and cobalt involves strong C-Co interactions which are responsible for a large interface magnetic anisotropy, capable of driving the magnetization out-of-the plane of the surface of an ultra-thin film in spite of the strong shape anisotropy in such films. The effect is maximized in the system obtained by intercalation between graphene and iridium, which comes naturally air-protected. Nanoclusters, on the contrary, seem to weakly interact with graphene. Small ones, comprising ca. 30 atoms each, remain super paramagnetic at 10 K, have no magnetic anisotropy, and it turns out difficult, even with 5 T fields to saturate their magnetization. Besides, the magnetic domains size seem to exceed the size of a single cluster, possibly pointing to magnetic interactions between clusters.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-00829379 |
| Date | 19 March 2013 |
| Creators | Vo Van, Chi |
| Publisher | Université de Grenoble |
| Source Sets | CCSD theses-EN-ligne, France |
| Language | fra |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD thesis |
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