Graphene spintronics: The European Flagship perspective

© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. Wereview current challenges and perspectives in graphene spintronics, which is one of themost promising directions of innovation, given its room-temperature long-spin lifetimes and the ability of graphene to be easily interfaced with other classes ofmaterials (ferromagnets, magnetic insulators, semiconductors, oxides, etc), allowing proximity effects to be harvested. The general context of spintronics is first discussed togetherwith open issues and recent advances achieved by theGraphene SpintronicsWork Package consortiumwithin theGraphene Flagship project. Based on such progress, which establishes the state of the art, several novel opportunities for spinmanipulation such as the generation of pure spin current (through spinHall effect) and the control of magnetization through the spin torque phenomena appear on the horizon. Practical applications arewithin reach, but will require the demonstration of wafer-scale graphene device integration, and the realization of functional prototypes employed for determined applications such as magnetic sensors or nano-oscillators. This is a specially commissioned editorial from the Graphene Flagship Work Package on Spintronics. This editorial is part of the 2DMaterials focus collection on 'Progress on the science and applications of twodimensionalmaterials,' published in association with theGraphene Flagship. It provides an overviewof key recent advances of the spintronicswork package aswell as the mid-term objectives of the consortium.