Spintronics in Carbon Nanostructures

The spin is the additional degree of freedom of an electron which can lead to a change in paradigm of present-day charge-based information processing. In particular, carbon based materials such as carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and their combination in peapods, could ultimately provide a reduced spin relaxation and decoherence, since they are less affected by spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling.

We synthesize carbon nanotubes and peapods for transport measurements. The structural and electronic properties of the systems are studied using HRTEM and Raman spectroscopy before they are correlated with electronic transport measurements.

We develop new structures and devices using state of the art electron beam lithography. The goal is to combine electron spin resonance techniques with quantum transport in order to investigate the spin properties of different carbon systems.

A not quite serious explanation of quantum transport given by Robert Frielinghaus, PhD student in the group, that won him the first price at the Einstein Slam in Göttingen: