Giving graphene a new handle on spins

Spintronics aims to process information with electron spins, reducing the energy cost of charge-based electronics. Graphene is an outstanding spin-transport channel, but its weak intrinsic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) limits electrical control. At ICN2, our team, in collaboration with ICMAB-CSIC and partners in Bulgaria, shows that placing graphene in contact with pentagonal PdSe2, a low-symmetry 2D crystal, breaks graphene’s in-plane symmetry and imprints a strongly anisotropic, gate-tunable SOC by proximity.In non-local spin-valve devices, we rotate the magnetic field in three dimensions to map spin precession and extract spin lifetimes along three orthogonal directions. At room temperature, the spin lifetime depends on the in-plane orientation and along two perpendicular axes it differs by more than an order of magnitude. Furthermore, the full angular dependence points to a “persistent” in-plane spin-texture component that governs the spin dynamics.Directional, voltage-programmable spin relaxation provides a practical route to graphene spin-logic and strengthens the case for engineering graphene-based platforms in the strong-SOC regime, where topological phases become accessible.