Tuning antiferromagnetism of vacancies with magnetic fields in graphene nanoflakes

Abstract

Graphene nanoflakes are interesting because electrons are naturally confined in these quasi-zero-dimensional structures, whereas confinement in bulk graphene would require a band gap. Vacancies inside the graphene lattice lead to localized states and the spins of such localized states may be used for spintronics. We perform a tight-binding description of a nanoflake with two vacancies and include a perpendicular magnetic field via a Peierls phase. The tunnel coupling strength and from it the exchange coupling between the localized states can be obtained from the energy splitting between numerically calculated bonding and antibonding energy levels. This allows us to estimate the exchange coupling $J$, which governs the dynamics of coupled spins. We predict the possibility of switching in situ from $J>0$ to $J=0$ by tuning the magnetic field. In the former case, the ground state will be antiferromagnetic with N\'eel temperatures accessible by experiment.