Dirac and Weyl Materials: Fundamental Aspects and Some Spintronics Applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews Dirac and Weyl materials, highlighting their fundamental properties and potential applications in spintronics, starting from graphene as a key example and discussing recent developments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the basic concepts, recent research, and potential spintronics applications of Dirac and Weyl materials.

Findings

Dirac and Weyl materials exhibit unique relativistic quasiparticle excitations.

Recent research has advanced understanding of their fundamental properties.

Potential spintronics applications are being actively explored.

Abstract

Dirac and Weyl materials refer to a class of solid materials which host low-energy quasiparticle excitations that can be described by the Dirac and Weyl equations in relativistic quantum mechanics. Starting with the advent of graphene as the first prominent example, these materials have been attracting tremendous interest owing to their novel fundamental properties as well as the great potential for applications. Here we introduce the basic concepts and notions related to Dirac and Weyl materials and briefly review some recent works in this field, particularly on the conceptual development and the possible spintronics/pseudospintronics applications.