Manipulation of Spin Transport in Graphene/Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterobilayers upon Twisting

Abstract

Proximity effects are one of the pillars of exotic phenomena and technological applications of two dimensional materials. However, the interactions nature depends strongly on the materials involved, their crystalline symmetries, and interfacial properties. Here we used large-scale first-principle calculations to demonstrate that strain and twist-angle are efficient knobs to tailor the spin-orbit coupling in graphene transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers. We found that by choosing a twist-angle of 30 degrees, the spin relaxation times increase by two orders of magnitude, opening a path to improve these heterostructures spin transport capability. Moreover, we demonstrate that strain and twist angle will modify the relative values of valley-Zeeman and Rashba spin-orbit coupling, allowing to tune the system into an ideal Dirac-Rashba regime. These results enable us to envision an answer for the variability of spin-orbit coupling found in different experiments and have significant consequences for applications that depend on polycrystallinity, where grains form at different orientations.

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Twist-angle dependent proximity induced spin-orbit coupling in graphene/transition-metal dichalcogenide heterostructures
• Charge-to-spin conversion in twisted graphene/WSe${}_2$ heterostructures
• Orbital Hall physics in two-dimensional Dirac materials
• Engineering Proximity Exchange by Twisting: Reversal of Ferromagnetic and Emergence of Antiferromagnetic Dirac Bands in Graphene/Cr${}_2$Ge${}_2$Te${}_6$
• Proximity effects in graphene on monolayers of transition-metal phosphorus trichalcogenides MPX${}_3$
• Strong manipulation of the valley splitting upon twisting and gating in MoSe${}_2$/CrI${}_3$ and WSe${}_2$/CrI${}_3$ van der Waals heterostructures
• Omnidirectional spin-to-charge conversion in graphene/NbSe${}_2$ van der Waals heterostructures
• Spin-orbit and exchange proximity couplings in graphene/1T-TaS${}_2$ heterostructure triggered by a charge density wave
• Proximity-enhanced valley Zeeman splitting at the WS${}_2$/graphene interface
• Edge states in proximitized graphene ribbons and flakes in a perpendicular magnetic field: emergence of lone pseudohelical pairs and pure spin-current states