Interface-Induced Room-Temperature Ferromagnetism in Hydrogenated Epitaxial Graphene

Abstract

We show ferromagnetic properties of hydrogen-functionalized epitaxial graphene on SiC. Ferromagnetism in such a material is not directly evident as it is inherently composed of only nonmagnetic constituents. Our results nevertheless show strong ferromagnetism with a saturation of 0.9μ(B)/hexagon projected area, which cannot be explained by simple magnetic impurities. The ferromagnetism is unique to hydrogenated epitaxial graphene on SiC, where interactions with the interfacial buffer layer play a crucial role. We argue that the origin of the observed ferromagnetism is governed by electron correlation effects of the narrow Si dangling bond states in the buffer layer exchange coupled to localized states in the hydrogenated graphene layer. This forms a quasi-three-dimensional ferromagnet with a Curie temperature higher than 300 K.