Magnetism of topological boundary states induced by boron substitution in graphene nanoribbons

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), low-dimensional platforms for carbon-based electronics, show the promising perspective to also incorporate spin polarization in their conjugated electron system. However, magnetism in GNRs is generally associated with localized states around zigzag edges, difficult to fabricate and with high reactivity. Here we demonstrate that magnetism can also be induced away from physical GNR zigzag edges through atomically precise engineering topological defects in its interior. A pair of substitutional boron atoms inserted in the carbon backbone breaks the conjugation of their topological bands and builds two spin-polarized boundary states around them. The spin state was detected in electrical transport measurements through boron-substituted GNRs suspended between the tip and the sample of a scanning tunneling microscope. First-principle simulations find that boron pairs induce a spin 1, which is modified by tuning the spacing between pairs. Our results demonstrate a route to embed spin chains in GNRs, turning them into basic elements of spintronic devices.
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (MAT2016-78293, PID2019-107338RB, FIS2017-83780-P, and the Maria de Maeztu Units of Excellence Programme MDM-2016-0618), from the European Union (EU) through Horizon 2020 (FET-Open project SPRING Grant. No. 863098), the Basque Departamento de Educación through the PhD fellowship No. PRE_2019_2_0218 (S.S.), the Xunta de Galicia (Centro de Investigación de Galicia accreditation 2019–2022, ED431G 2019/03), the University of the Basque Country (Grant IT1246-19), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). I. P. also thanks Xunta de Galicia and European Union (European Social Fund, ESF) for the award of a predoctoral fellowship