"Seamless" Graphene Interconnects for the Prospect of All-Carbon Spin-Polarized Field-Effect Transistors

Magnetism in graphene nanofragments arises from the spin polarization of the edge-states; consequently, as the material inexorably shrinks, magnetism will become a dominant feature whereas the bulk carrier mobility will be less relevant. We have carried out an ab initio study of the role of graphene-ultrananofragment magnetism on the electronic transport. We present, as a proof-of-concept, a nanoscopic spin-polarized field-effect transistor (FET) with the channel and metallic contacts carved from a single graphene sheet. We demonstrate the selective tuning of conductance through electric-field control of the magnetic, rather than the charge, degrees of freedom of the channel, the latter typically employed in microscopic graphene FETs.