Gate-induced half-metals in Bernal stacked graphene multilayer

TL;DR

This paper predicts that Bernal stacked graphene multilayers can become half-metals under electric fields and doping, with distinct behaviors in even and odd layers, offering a new platform for spintronic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical proposal for inducing half-metallic phases in Bernal stacked graphene multilayers through electric field and doping, highlighting differences between even and odd layers.

Findings

Electric field induces spin-polarized band inversion in 4L-BGM.

Odd-layer BGM shows intrinsic spin degeneracy breaking due to sublattice inequivalence.

4L-BGM is a promising platform to observe half-metallic phases.

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that the Bernal stacked graphene multilayer (BGM) have an interaction induced gapped (or pseudo gapped) ground state. Here, we propose that, due to the electron correlation, the BGM can be induced into a half metallic phase by applying a vertical electric field and doping. The half metallic states in even-layer and odd-layer BGMs have totally different behaviors, due to their different band structures. We systematically calculate the graphene tetralayer (4L-BGM) and trilayer (3L-BGM) as the typical examples of the even-layer and odd-layer BGMs, respectively. In 4L-BGM, we find an interesting phenomenon of electric field induced inversion of the spin-polarized bands. Namely, in the half metallic phase, the spin polarization of the conducting channel and the net magnetic moment are inversed when the applied electric field exceeds a critical value. In 3L-BGM, a remarkable feature is that the inequivalence of the the two sublattices will intrinsically break the degeneracy of the the spin-up and spin-down bands even in the zero electric field case. Our results suggest that 4L-BGM should be an ideal platform to detect the proposed half metallic phase in BGM systems.