Dirac Material Graphene Elena Sheka Russian Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia Moscow, 117198 Russia
[email protected] Abstract. The paper presents author’s view on spin-rooted properties of graphene supported by numerous experimental and calculation evidences. Correlation of odd pz electrons of the honeycomb lattice meets a strict demand “different orbitals for different spins”, which leads to spin polarization of electronic states, on the one hand, and generation of an impressive pool of local spins distributed over the lattice, on the other. These features characterize graphene as a peculiar semimetal with Dirac cone spectrum at particular points of Brillouin zone. However, spin-orbit coupling (SOC), though small but available, supplemented by dynamic SOC caused by electron correlation, transforms graphene-semimetal into graphene-topological insulator (TI). The consequent topological non-triviality and local spins are proposed to discuss such peculiar properties of graphene as high temperature ferromagnetism and outstanding chemical behavior. The connection of these new findings with difficulties met at attempting to convert graphene-TI into semiconductor one is discussed. Key words: graphene, Dirac fermions, quasi-relativistic description, hexagonal honeycomb structure, local spins, open-shell molecules, spin-orbital coupling, quantum spin Hall insulator, high temperature ferromagnetism, chemical activity. 1. Introduction Presented in the current paper concerns three main issues laying the foundation of spin features of graphene: (1) a significant correlation of pz odd electrons, exhibited in terms of spin peculiarities of the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) solutions, (2) spin-orbital coupling (SOC) and (3) the crucial role of the C=C bond length distribution over the body in exhibiting the spin- based features.