Electrical spin injection, transport, and detection in graphene-hexagonal boron nitride van der Waals heterostructures: progress and perspectives

Spin injection, transport, and detection are three fundamental processes in spintronics, and the control over these processes is crucial for designing new types of spintronic devices. Various materials have been investigated to realize these phenomena for practical spintronic applications. Graphene has found its place in spintronics due to its favourable properties such as low spin–orbit coupling and small hyperfine interactions [1, 2]. Besides, graphene offers a large carrier mobility and an electrostatic-gate tunable carrier density from the electrons to the holes regime. In the past decade, a huge amount of research has been carried out in a direction towards bringing graphene's predicted expectations to realize practical applications. Much of the effort has gone into finding solutions to the key challenges in graphene spintronics including, among many others, finding effective tunnel barriers for efficient spin injection and detection, and a clean environment for long distance spin transport in graphene. Along the way, the discovery of various two-dimensional (2D) materials with distinctive physical properties and the possibility of fabricating van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures with graphene, has increased the figure of merit of graphene spintronic devices. Especially, recent findings of using hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as a substrate and as a tunnel barrier for graphene spin valve devices has attracted a lot of attention.

In this review we present recent developments in spin transport in graphene-hBN vdW heterostructures and discuss the role of hBN as a gate dielectric substrate and as a tunneling spin injection/detection barrier for graphene spintronic devices. We first focus on the early research on graphene spin valves with conventional SiO₂/Si substrates, and discuss drawbacks of oxide dielectric substrates. Then we give an account of the progress in different techniques developed for fabricating graphene-hBN heterostructures, and chronologically examine the progress in hBN supported graphene spin valves. Next, we describe the drawbacks of various oxide tunnel barriers and discuss the recent emergence of atomically thin layers of hBN as tunnel barriers for improved spin injection and detection in graphene. Finally, we share a few interesting perspectives on the future of spintronics with graphene-hBN heterostructures.

Spin transport in graphene is usually studied in a non-local four-terminal geometry, schematically shown in figure 1(a). A charge current i is applied between C1–C2 contacts and a nonlocal voltage-drop $v$ is measured across C3–C4 contacts. Usually the nonlocal signal is defined in terms of a nonlocal resistance $R_{{\rm nl}}=v/i$. A non-zero spin accumulation is created in graphene underneath C1 and C2 due to a spin-polarized current through the ferromagnetic (FM) electrodes entering into graphene, and it diffuses along both positive and negative x-directions. Ideally, the charge current is only present in the local part between C1–C2, therefore, the nonlocal voltage is only due to the spin accumulation diffused outside the charge current path. For spin transport measurements, one needs at least two ferromagnetic electrodes, one for spin injection and one for spin voltage detection. The outer electrodes of C1 and C4 can also be nonmagnetic and serve as reference electrodes. For simplicity of the measurement data analysis, they can be designed far away from the inner electrodes and do not contribute to the spin transport.

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For spin valve measurements, an in-plane magnetic field $B_{{\rm y}}$ is applied along the easy axis of the ferromagnets, y-direction (figure 1(a)). Initially all the electrodes have their magnetization aligned in the same direction. This configuration is called the parallel (P) configuration. Then $B_{{\rm y}}$ is applied in the opposite direction. When the magnetization of a FM electrode C2 or C3 reverses its direction, there is a sharp transition registered in $v$ or R_nl, and the magnetizations of electrodes in C2–C3 become aligned in the anti-parallel (AP) configuration with respect to each other. On further increasing $B_{{\rm y}}$, the second electrode also switches its magnetization direction, and now again both electrodes are aligned in P configuration. It completes the spin valve measurement (figure 1(b)). The difference between the magnitude of nonlocal signal in P and AP states, i.e. $\Delta R_{{\rm nl}}=(R_{{\rm nl}}^{{\rm P}}-R_{{\rm nl}}^{{\rm AP}})/2$, is termed as nonlocal spin signal or nonlocal magnetoresistance and appears due to the diffusion of the spin-accumulation in the nonlocal part.

The presence of the spin accumulation is confirmed by Hanle spin precession measurements (figures 1(c)–(e)). Here, a magnetic field $B_{{\rm z}}$ is applied perpendicular to the plane of graphene. The spins injected via C2 in the x-y plane of graphene precess around $B_{{\rm z}}$ and get dephased while diffusing towards C3. The dephasing of the spins is seen in a reduced $\Delta R_{{\rm nl}}$ as a function of $B_{{\rm z}}$. Spin transport parameters such as spin lifetime $\tau_{{\rm s}}$, spin diffusion constant $D_{{\rm s}}$, and spin relaxation length $\lambda_{{\rm s}}$(=$\sqrt{D_{{\rm s}} \tau_{{\rm s}}}$) are obtained by fitting the Hanle data with the steady state solution to the one-dimensional Bloch equation: $\newcommand{\tr}{{\rm tr}} D_{{\rm s}} \triangledown^{2}\vec {\mu_{{\rm s}}} - \vec {\mu_{{\rm s}}}/\tau_{{\rm s}} + \vec {\omega_{{\rm L}}}\times\vec {\mu_{{\rm s}}}= 0$, where $\vec {\mu_{{\rm s}}}$ is the spin accumulation, $\vec {\omega_{{\rm L}}} = \frac{g \mu_{{\rm B}} B_{{\rm z}}}{\hbar}$ is the Larmor frequency with g  =  2, the Landé factor, $\mu_{{\rm B}}$, the Bohr magneton, and $\hbar$, the reduced Planck constant.

The values of $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ and $D_{{\rm s}}$ obtained from the spin transport measurements are often used for identifying the spin relaxation mechanism in graphene [3–6]. There are two possible mechanisms that are believed to cause spin relaxation in graphene. One is the Elliott–Yafet (EY) mechanism [7, 8] in which the electron spins relax via the momentum scattering at impurities/defects and as a result $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ is proportional to the momentum relaxation time $\tau_{{\rm p}}$. The other one is the D'Yakanov–Perel' (DP) mechanism [9] in which the electron spins dephase in between the two scattering events under the influence of local spin–orbit fields and $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ is inversely proportional to $\tau_{{\rm p}}$.

Due to the 2D nature of single layer graphene, its carrier density is confined within one atomic thickness, making its surface extremely susceptible to the surroundings. This sensitivity of graphene poses a big challenge while measuring its intrinsic properties. On the other hand, at the same time, the sensitivity is valuable for incorporating physical properties via proximity effects that do not exist in pristine graphene in the first place [10, 11].

In order to make a field-effect transistor (FET), one needs a dielectric environment. The presence of a substrate is necessary to support graphene and to make it useful for device applications. However, the environment that comes with the substrate plays a crucial role in determining the electronic transport properties of graphene.

The ability to image the atomically thick regions of graphene on a SiO₂ surface using an optical microscope led to the discovery of monolayer graphene [12]. Very soon after the discovery, the pioneering work of Tombros et al [13], first demonstrated the electrical spin injection and detection in the non-local four-terminal geometry over a micrometer distance in a monolayer graphene on a SiO₂/Si substrate at room temperature (RT) (device A1 in figure 2). It was further proved by the Hanle spin precession measurements that the spin signal was indeed due to the transport of electron spins in graphene.

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The charge and spin transport characteristics of the early reported graphene spin valve devices on SiO₂/Si substrate viz., mobility μ below 5000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, spin lifetime $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ below 500 ps, and spin relaxation length $\lambda_{{\rm s}}$ up to 2 μm [13, 14], were several orders of magnitude lower than the predicted values $\tau_{{\rm s}} \approx$ 1 μs and $\lambda_{{\rm s}} \approx$ 100 μm [1, 2]. Such low values were believed to be due to extrinsic impurity scattering introduced during the device preparation, and the underlying SiO₂/Si substrate. Similar experimental observations were reported subsequently[14–18], and pointed out that the charge impurities and adatoms on SiO₂/Si substrate are the possible sources of an enhanced spin scattering in graphene.

The SiO₂/Si substrate is shown to degrade the electronic quality of graphene due to (i) corrugations imparted by its surface roughness, (ii) scattering induced from impurity charge traps in oxide [19, 20], (iii) surface phonons causing a weak temperature dependent spin relaxation [21], and (iv) electron–hole puddles due to charge impurity disorder on the substrate [22, 23]. These observations suggest that, besides the impurities, the underlying SiO₂/Si dielectric substrate also affects the pristine charge and spin transport properties of graphene.

Several attempts have been made to improve the graphene spin valve device architecture for overcoming the aforementioned challenges due to a SiO₂/Si substrate. An account of various device geometries developed over the past decade is given in figure 2. In order to avoid impurities and disorder coming from the underlying SiO₂/Si substrate, either it should be removed or replaced. One way to completely remove the influence of the substrate is to suspend graphene (device C2 in figure 2) which resulted in very high mobility (∼10⁵ cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹) devices [24]. However, the suspended regions are subjected to ripples and strain [25], and are very delicate, causing fabrication challenges. Spin transport in these devices is limited by the polymer supported regions of the suspended graphene resulting in $\tau_{{\rm s}} \approx 120$–250 ps and $\lambda_{{\rm s}} \approx 1.9$–4.7 μm [26, 27]. Another way to overcome the imperfections of SiO₂/Si is to epitaxially grow graphene directly on a substrate such as silicon carbide (SiC) [28, 29] (device C1 in figure 2). However, the localized states present in SiC were found to influence the spin diffusion transport through interlayer hopping mechanisms [30].

Over the past years few other substrates have also been used for graphene spin valve devices to add additional functionalities to graphene. These include, a SrTiO₃ (STO) substrate for an epitaxial growth of highly spin polarized La_0.67Sr_0.33MnO₃ (LSMO) contacts for graphene [31], a Y₃Fe₂(FeO₄)₃ (YIG) substrate as a magnetically proximity coupling ferromagnetic insulator [32, 33], and recently used transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) substrates to proximity induce spin–orbit coupling in graphene[34–45].

Among all the different substrates proposed for studying spin transport in graphene, it was found that a few nanometer thick hBN can serve as an excellent dielectric substrate to overcome some of the aforementioned problems for improving the transport characteristics and studying the intrinsic properties of graphene. Atomically thin hBN belongs to the 2D family of layered materials and is an isomorph of graphite with similar hexagonal layered structure with a small lattice mismatch [46] of  ∼1.8%. It is an insulator with a wide bandgap [47]  ∼5.7 eV and can be exfoliated from boron nitride crystals down to a monolayer [48, 49], similar to graphene. In contrast to SiO₂/Si substrates, the surface of hBN is atomically smooth, has few charge inhomogeneities [50], is chemically inert, free of dangling bonds due to a strong in-plane bonding of the hexagonal structure, and exerts less strain on graphene [51]. Moreover, the dielectric properties [52, 53] of hBN including a dielectric constant  ∼4 and a breakdown voltage  ∼1.2 V nm⁻¹, are comparable to SiO₂, favouring the use of hBN as an alternative substrate without the loss of dielectric functionality.

Indeed, among the 2D materials, hBN has been demonstrated to be an excellent dielectric substrate for graphene field-effect transistors [54–57] and spin valves [5, 58–60], showing excellent charge and spin transport characteristics where graphene on hBN showed very high electronic quality with mobility reaching up to  ∼15 000–60 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ [54, 61] (device B1 in figure 2) and enhanced spin transport parameters: spin lifetime $\tau_{{\rm s}} \sim 2$–12.6 ns [62] and spin relaxation length $\lambda_{{\rm s}} \sim 12$–30.5 μm [59, 60, 62].

In order to utilize the aforementioned excellent substrate properties of hBN, one needs to be able to place graphene on the surface of hBN. Various methods have been developed for transferring graphene onto other 2D materials or substrates. These methods can be classified into two categories; methods that require the growth of graphene directly on top of other 2D materials or substrates, and methods that require the transfer of graphene from one substrate to on top of desired 2D materials or substrates. The former methods are of considerable interest for batch production and is still under developing stage for device applications [63–66]. The latter methods have been developed at laboratory scales and are currently in use for fabricating vdW heterostructure devices combining various 2D materials. Here we briefly review the progress in developing the transfer methods for fabricating graphene-hBN vdW heterostructures (figure 2) for spin transport studies.

The possibility of transferring the exfoliated graphene from a SiO₂/Si substrate to other substrates was first demonstrated by Reina et al [67]. The first reported 2D heterostructure device, a graphene field-effect transistor on hBN, was fabricated by Dean et al [54] by transferring an exfoliated graphene flake onto an exfoliated hBN flake. This method involves the exfoliation of graphene onto a polymer stack, polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA)/water-soluble-layer(aquaSAVE), followed by dissolving the water soluble layer in a DI water bath before transferring onto a hBN substrate, and is thus referred to as 'polymer transfer method'. To achieve high quality of graphene, it is important to protect its surface from coming in a contact with any solvent. Therefore, the same authors [54] later improved this method to avoid any possible contact with water by replacing the water-soluble-layer with a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) layer which allowed to peel off the PMMA layer without the need to expose graphene/PMMA to water and thereby achieving a fully 'dry transfer method' [68]. In a dry transfer method, the interfaces, except the top surface, do not come in a contact with the lithography polymers or any solvents used during the device preparation. However, the polymer contact with a graphene or hBN flake leaves residues which need to be removed by a thermal annealing step, typically in an intert Ar/H₂ atmosphere at 300 °C [54] or in Ar/O₂ at 500 °C [69] for a few hours.

In order to prepare multilayer (>2 layer) heterostructures, a layer-by-layer transfer method [70] was proposed which is equivalent to repeating the dry transfer step [68] followed by the annealing step for transfer of each layer. This layer-by-layer stacking method in principle lacks the control over the crystallographic orientation of the crystals. Moreover, it results in bubbles, wrinkles, and leaves some unavoidable adsorbates at the interfaces of the staked layers which deteriorate the intrinsic quality of the heterostructure. Even during the device fabrication process, the regions of graphene for metallization get exposed to the lithography polymers and leave some residues, which are difficult to remove, resulting in low quality electrode-graphene interfaces [70, 71].

The presence of bubbles and wrinkles in a hBN-graphene-hBN heterostructure device [72] limits the mobility of the graphene flake [73]. The problems with folds and bubbles in graphene on hBN can be reduced by using a transfer technique with the aid of an optical mask, developed by Zomer et al [61], using which only up to 5% region of the transferred graphene flakes showed bubbles or wrinkles. The spin valve devices prepared using this method [5] showed an enhanced charge-carrier diffusion with mobilities up to 40 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and spin transport signatures over lengths up to 20 μm. This method requires the exfoliation of graphene onto a polymer mask before transferring onto a targeted substrate. The method was later tested by Leon et al [74] with a slight modification, where the graphene flake on a polymer coated substrate can be transferred onto a desired location on another substrate. One drawback of these methods [61, 74] is the difficulty in finding graphene flakes exfoliated on the polymer layer. Moreover the presence of bubbles and wrinkles, due to multiple transfer-annealing processes in a graphene-hBN device [72] limits the graphene mobility [73] and the quality of the electrode interface with graphene [75, 76].

For the assembly of multiple graphene and hBN layers, without exposing the interfaces to polymers and for minimizing the interfacial bubbles, Wang et al [77] developed the 'vdW transfer method' in which one hBN flake on a polymer layer is used for picking up other 2D materials on SiO₂/Si substrates via van der Waals interactions which is stronger between hBN and graphene than that between graphene and SiO₂, or hBN and SiO₂. The graphene channel region encapsulated between the top and bottom hBN flakes does not come in a contact with any polymer, limiting the interfacial bubbles and does not require the annealing step unlike previously reported encapsulated graphene devices [70, 74]. However, this method is useful only for fabricating 1D contacts along the edges of graphene (device A4 in figure 2), and the 1D ferromagnetic contacts [78, 79] are yet to be proven suitable for fabricating spintronic devices over the traditionally used (2D) ferromagnetic tunnel contacts [13, 80]. Moreover this method is ineffective for picking up graphene flakes longer than the top-hBN flake on the polymer layer.

Later, Zomer et al [81] developed the 'fast pick up and transfer method' using which one can make high quality, hBN-encapsulated graphene devices without any size restrictions for a successive pick up of 2D crystals. This method is successfully implemented to fabricate hBN-encapsulated graphene spin valve devices which have demonstrated a long spin lifetime up to 2.4 (1.9) ns in monolayer graphene and 2.5 (2.9) ns in bilayer graphene at RT (4.2 K), and spin relaxation lengths up to 12.1 (12.3) μm in monolayer graphene [59], and 13 (24) μm in bilayer graphene [60] at RT (4.2 K). This method is also used for preparing fully hBN encapsulated graphene spin valve devices [80, 82].

Over the past years few other pick-up and transfer techniques have also been developed for fabricating 2D vdW heterostructures which can be used for preparing graphene spin valve devices depending on the device geometry and material type requirements. These include a 'hot pick up technique' for batch assembly of 2D crystals [83], a 'deterministic transfer' of 2D crystals by all-dry viscoelastic stamping [84], a 'dry PMMA transfer' of flakes using a heating/cooling system for bubble-free interfaces [85], and a 'dry-transfer technique combined with thermal annealing' [86].

The possibility of fabricating graphene-hBN heterostructures by utilizing the aforementioned fabrication techniques enabled the researchers to explore the intrinsic transport properties of graphene in a high quality environment. Due to a smoother surface and less trapped charge impurities than a SiO₂/Si substrate [50], a hBN substrate provides an improved carrier transport in graphene with large mobility [54] and is expected to show enhanced spin transport [22]. The first reported charge transport characteristics of graphene on a hBN substrate showed high mobility  ≈140 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ which is typically two orders of magnitude higher than in graphene on SiO₂, and the charge neutrality point close to zero gate voltage [54]. Therefore, the effect of charge impurities on spin transport in graphene is estimated to be lower for graphene on hBN [22].

The first graphene spin valves fabricated on a hBN substrate by Zomer et al [5] (figures 1(b) and (c)) showed an improved charge transport with high mobility  ≈40 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and an enhanced spin relaxation length up to 4.5 μm at RT (device B1 in figure 2). Moreover, spin signals over a long distance up to 20 μm were also detected. Despite increasing the mobility of graphene, there seemed to be no significant effect of using a hBN substrate on the spin relaxation time whose values are of similar order of magnitude to that are observed using a SiO₂/Si substrate [13, 14, 16]. A study of spin transport in graphene with different mobilities agrees with these results [87]. Therefore, it implies that there is no strong correlation between the observed $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ and the mobility of the graphene. It also suggests that there is no major role of charge scattering due to substrate in modifying the spin relaxation time.

Even though the hBN substrate provides a smooth and impurity free environment for the bottom surface of graphene, the top surface gets exposed to the chemicals from the device fabrication steps, similar to the devices prepared on a SiO₂/Si substrate [5]. A possible dominant spin relaxation source in this geometry (device B1 in figure 2) is believed to be the spin scattering due to residues from the polymer assisted fabrication steps [88], and charge impurities and adatoms already present on graphene. Similar spin relaxation times were observed in graphene on SiO₂/Si and hBN substrates, which indicate that the substrate and its roughness do not seem to drastically influence the spin relaxation in graphene. It was also shown that the EY and DP spin relaxation mechanisms play equally important roles for causing spin dephasing in graphene on hBN as well as in graphene on SiO₂ [5].

The polymer residues and other contaminations due to the sample fabrication can be mechanically cleaned from the graphene on hBN substrate by scanning an AFM tip in contact-mode which sweeps the impurities from the graphene surface [73, 89]. However, during this process ferromagnetic electrodes get exposed to air and may oxidize. In order to avoid the lithography residues on a graphene spin transport channel, while still using the conventional oxide tunnel barriers, two possible routes have been explored over the years; one is the bottom-up fabrication method [58] (device C3 in figure 2) and the other is the encapsulation of graphene from both top and bottom [59, 60] (device B2 in figure 2).

The first route is to reverse the traditional top-down device fabrication process by transferring a hBN/graphene stack on top of the already deposited oxide-barrier/FM electrods on a substrate, as demonstrated by Drögeler et al [58] (device C3 in figure 2). This bottom-up approach serves two advantages. First, unlike graphene spin valves prepared via the traditional top-down approach on SiO₂ [13] or hBN [5] substrates, in this method graphene does not come in a direct contact with the lithography polymer PMMA during the device fabrication. Another advantage is that the fabrication procedure does not involve the direct growth of oxide tunnel barriers on graphene which is believed to cause an island growth and subsequent pinholes in the barrier [90], acting as spin dephasing centers. Instead here the MgO barrier is grown epitaxially on cobalt [91], giving a smoother surface [92] for graphene to be transferred directly on top. Due to a high quality interface of the barrier with graphene and its lithography free environment, the resulting mobility values exceeded 20 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and spin relaxation time up to 3.7 ns are achieved in a trilayer graphene encapsulated by the hBN from the top [58].

Previously, bilayer graphene spin valve devices on SiO₂/Si substrate [17] have showen the spin relaxation times up to 30 ps for the mobility up to 8000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, and up to 1 ns for the mobility as low as 300 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹. Whereas the spin lifetime of 3.7 ns was obtained [58] for the devices with mobility of two orders of magnitude higher, 20 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹. The increase in mobility of graphene in the bottom-up fabricated device is attributed to the decoupling of graphene from the SiO₂, while the increase in the spin lifetime is attributed to a clean graphene/MgO contact interface by transferring the graphene directly onto the pre-patterned tunneling electrodes [58, 92]. Later it was discovered that while fabricating a bottom-up device, the lithography solvents can still reach the graphene/MgO contacts region underneath the top-hBN encapsulating flake [62]. The contaminations coming from the solvent during the device fabrication were found to play substantial role in influencing the spin lifetime. Therefore, when a large-hBN flake was used to avoid graphene from coming in a contact with the solvents, contacts with similar contact resistance-area product $R_{{\rm c}} A$ values resulted in a spin lifetime of an order of magnitude higher [62], up to 12.6 ns, compared to the previously reported bottom-up fabricated device [58] (figure 1(e)). These results indicate that the lithographic impurities are the main limiting factor for spin transport in graphene.

Another route to avoid the polymer contaminations on graphene supported on a hBN is to protect the graphene spin transport channel by encapsulating it from the top with a second hBN flake (device B2 in figure 2). The top-hBN encapsulation layer serves few advantages: (i) it protects the graphene transport channel from coming in a direct contact with the lithography polymers or solvents [59], (ii) it can be used as a top-gate dielectric to tune the carrier density in the encapsulated graphene transport channel and create p  −  n junctions [80], and allows to study spin transport across the p  −  n junction [80, 93, 94], and (iii)it creates the possibility to electrically control the spin information in graphene via Rashba SOC [59].

Guimarães et al [59] fabricated a spin valve device in which the central part of the graphene flake on a hBN substrate is covered with a top-hBN flake (device B2 in figure 2). The encapsulated region showed large mobility up to 15 000 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ at RT, and resulted in an enhanced spin lifetime about 2 ns and spin relaxation length about 12 μm for a monolayer-graphene [59] (figure 1(d)) at RT. This is a combined effect of an improved carrier transport ($D_{{\rm s}}$) and spin relaxation time. However the nonecapsulated region showed a spin lifetime around 0.3 ns in the same flake [59], similar to the case of bare graphene on hBN [5]. In this device geometry (device B2 in figure 2), the spin transport channel also consists of nonencapsulated regions where graphene is exposed to the polymer residues on outside of the top-hBN, with mobilities and spin relaxation times lower than the top-hBN encapsulated region [59, 60]. Such an unevenly doped graphene channel makes it difficult to analyse the spin transport measurements in the central region [26, 59, 60, 95] and requires complex modeling.

Further understanding about the influence of the polymer residues on spin transport properties can be achieved by reducing the size of the graphene regions exposed to the polymer residues. Avsar et al [93] studied the role of extrinsic polymer residues on the spin relaxation in bilayer-graphene encapsulated everywhere except under the contacts by a pre-patterned thick top-hBN layer and a bottom-hBN substrate (device B3 in figure 2). The authors reported a nearly five times higher $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ of  ≈420 ps for the hBN encapsulated regions compared to $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ of  ≈90 ps for the non-encapsulated regions of the same device. It suggests that the lithographic residues on the spin transport channel have a significant effect on the spin transport properties. The reported $\tau_{{\rm s}}$  ≈  90 ps for the non-encapsulated graphene is comparable to that for bare graphene on SiO₂ [13] and hBN [5] substrates with similar mobilities. It supports the conclusions of Zomer et al [5] that the impurities, surface phonons, and roughness of the underlying substrate are not the limiting factors of spin relaxation in graphene. Therefore, low values of spin transport parameters can be attributed to the contact regions of graphene that are exposed to polymers and the quality of the oxide tunnel barrier interface with graphene.

One needs to find a way to avoid the polymer contaminations on graphene, even underneath the contacts. This improves the tunnel barrier interface with graphene. In principle, both can be achieved by fully encapsulating the graphene spin transport channel from the top and bottom. However, one of the encapsulating layers needs to be of only few atomic layers thick, so that it can also be used as a tunnel barrier for electrical spin injection and detection via the ferromagnetic electrodes. In fact, atomically thin hBN was found to be a unique tunnel barrier for graphene field-effect transistor devices [55] in additional to its excellent dielectric substrate properties. Moreover, the full encapsulation of graphene with hBN by far has proved to be effective for an efficient spin injection/detection in graphene which will be discussed in section 7.

So far we have been discussing the effect of the quality of graphene over its spin transport and the progressive improvement by adapting various graphene-hBN heterostructure device geometries, viz., devices A1, A2, A4, B1–B3, and C1–C3 in figure 2. Another factor, which is believed to be a major cause of spin relaxation in graphene, that we have not discussed so far, is the spin relaxation due to the ferromagnetic tunneling spin injection and detection contacts, and their interface with the underlying graphene.

In a basic graphene spin valve device (device A0 in figure 2), a charge current passing through an FM/graphene contact can create a spin accumulation in graphene underneath the contact. Signatures of nonlocal spin injection and detection in graphene through FM/graphene transparent contacts (device A0 in figure 2) have been reported in early spin transport investigations [96–99]. However, due to the well known conductivity-mismatch problem [100] with these contacts there is spin absorption and spin relaxation via the ferromagnetic electrodes, and the efficiency of spin injection into graphene is reduced [101].

The fundamental problem of spin injection which is the conductiviy mismatch problem, was first highlighted by Filip et al [100] for spin injection into semiconductors, according to whom comparable resistivities of the ferromagnetic metal electrode and graphene lead to a negligible spin injection polarization in graphene. The solution to this problem, according to Rashba [102], and Fert and Jaffrès [103], is to introduce a highly resistive tunnel barrier at the FM-graphene interface which will limit the back flow of the spins from graphene into the FM, and avoid the contact induced spin relaxation. Therefore, the first experimentally reported unambiguous nonlocal spin transport via Hanle spin precession measurements in graphene spin valve devices was achieved by using Al₂O₃ tunnel barriers between the FM and graphene [13] i.e. with FM/Al₂O₃/graphene tunnel contacts. Even though the Hanle spin precession signal was also measured later with transparent contacts [101], the spin injection efficiency was highly limited by the conductivity mismatch problem [16, 101, 104].

In spite of introducing the thin layer of oxide tunnel barriers, the metrics for spin transport in graphene, i.e. spin lifetime and spin relaxation length, are far lower than the estimated values for intrinsic graphene [1, 105, 106]. These values are believed to suffer from the combined effect of the quality of the tunnel barrier, and its interface with graphene, besides the impurities present in the transport channel.

Now we chronologically review the progress of oxide tunnel barriers for spin injection and detection in graphene. Overall, the spin relaxation time in graphene is limited by the ferromagnetic tunnel contacts in two ways. One way is through spin absorption from graphene into FM electrodes via pinholes in the tunnel barrier. The pinholes provide a short circuit path between the FM electrode and graphene, leading to the conductivity mismatch problem [100]. This effect can be quantified with the values of ($\frac{R_{{\rm c}}}{R_{{\rm s}}}, \frac{L}{\lambda}$) parameters[107–110], where $R_{{\rm c}}$ is the contact resistance, $R_{{\rm s}}$ is the spin resistance of graphene, and $R_{{\rm s}} = \frac{R_{{\rm sq}} \lambda_{{\rm s}}}{W}$ with the square resistance $R_{{\rm sq}}$ and width W of graphene. Even when there is no conductivity mismatch problem, there can still be an influence of contacts on the spin transport properties of the transport channel. Another way to influence the spin relaxation time is through the multiple tunnel barrier-graphene interface related effects such as a deteriorated graphene surface due to a direct deposition of the barrier material which can lead to an island like growth of oxide barrier and amorphize graphene where the barrier is grown [111], magnetostatic fringe fields from ferromagnets [112], spin-flip scattering at the nonuniform interface between the barrier and graphene [113–115] and and a complex interplay between ferromagnet d-orbitals and graphene π-orbitals [116, 117].

Over the past years, much of the research is dedicated to understand the potential sources of spin relaxation in graphene with respect to ferromagnetic tunnel contacts, especially the role of oxide barriers. It has focused on two aspects of the tunnel barriers. One is the material type, for example, Al₂O₃, MgO, TiO₂, and SrO. The other one is the growth method, for example, electron beam evaporation, atomic layer deposition (ALD), molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth, and sputtering.

Several studies have revealed that, in case of oxide barriers, besides the choice of the barrier material, the method of evaporation or growth of the barrier is also important to achieve an efficient spin injection. Tunnel barriers of Al₂O₃ grown by Tombros et al [13] involve the deposition of Al by the electron beam evaporation at first, followed by the oxidation step which likely gives pinholes in the barrier as reported in subsequent reports from the same group [15, 16]. The spin lifetime is observed to be increased with TiO₂ barriers [5, 13] grown by electron beam evaporation which are believed to be smoother than Al₂O₃ barriers. However, there has been no systematic investigation of the growth and quality of TiO₂ barriers in relation to the spin relaxation time in graphene.

Early results on spin injection with MgO barriers grown by electron beam evaporation reported to show pinholes, caused by the high surface diffusivity of MgO on graphene, resulting in the inhomogeneous island growth of MgO on the graphene surface [14, 118]. Dlubak et al [111] showed that the sputtering of MgO causes more damage to the graphene lattice by amorphization of carbon than the sputtering of Al₂O₃. The MBE growth of MgO does not seem to impact the quality of graphene [17], and gives a relatively pinhole free, uniform, and continuous MgO layer on graphene [119]. Despite the presence of occasional pinholes in these MgO barriers, Yang et al [17] reported long spin relaxation times up to 2 ns in exfoliated bilayer graphene on a SiO₂/Si substrate. However, the tunneling characteristics and spin injection efficiency of these contacts were not discussed by the authors. A direct observation of increase in the spin lifetime with an increase in contact resistance-area $R_{{\rm c}} A$ product of the MgO barrier contacts indicates that the pinholes in the barrier contacts significantly affect the spin relaxation in graphene underneath the contacts [116]. Furthermore, by successive oxygen treatments, low-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ MgO contacts with transparent regions or pinholes can be successfully transformed into high-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ contacts with a reduced pinhole density [117]. Such behaviour of the contacts suggests that the spin lifetime and spin injection efficiency are limited by the presence of pinholes in the barrier.

Addition of a Ti buffer layer between MgO and graphene has been shown to curb the mobility of surface atoms and allow the growth of an atomically smooth layer of MgO barrier by the MBE [90]. Indeed, TiO₂ seeded MgO barriers were reported [14] to show tunneling characteristics, resulting in large spin polarizations up to 30% and long spin relaxation times up to 500 ps, compared to then previously reported transparent [96–99, 101] and pinhole [16, 104] contacts, indicating a reduction in spin relaxation due to the improved quality of the tunnel contacts [14]. However there was not a good control achieved over the reproducibility of high quality growth of TiO₂ seeded MgO tunnel barriers and it has been difficult to achieve a high spin injection polarization consistently [14].

For an efficient use of MgO barriers and to avoid the contact growth directly on graphene, a new workaround was introduced [58], the 'bottom-up fabrication method' (device C3 in figure 2), where MgO/Co contacts were first deposited by the MBE on a bare SiO₂/Si substrate followed by transferring the hBN/graphene stack on top. In addition, this geometry also blocks the polymer residues from coming in contact with graphene at the barrier/graphene interface, and resulted in a high spin relaxation time up to 3.7 ns in trilayer graphene. This performance was attributed to a clean interface of the barrier with graphene and high-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ of the contacts. These results imply that the quality and direct growth of the oxide barrier, and the polymer residues at the barrier-graphene interface play an important role in spin dephasing in graphene, especially underneath the contacts.

Over the past years few other tunnel barriers have also been used for graphene spin valve devices. These include a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) growth of ferromagnetic oxide LSMO contacts for graphene on a STO substrate [31], ALD growth of diazonium salt seeded HfO₂ tunnel barrier for epitaxial graphene on SiC substrate [120], thermal evaporation growth of yttrium-oxide (Y-O) barrier for graphene on SiO₂/Si substrate [121], MBE growth of SrO barriers for graphene on SiO₂/Si substrate [122–124], hydrogenated graphene barriers for graphene on a SiO₂/Si substrate [125], fluorinated graphene for graphene on a SiO₂/Si substrate [126], electron-beam induced deposition of amorphous carbon interfacial layer at the FM/graphene interface [127], exfoliated [33, 80, 82, 128, 129] and CVD grown [6, 130, 131] hBN barriers for graphene on SiO₂, hBN, and YIG substrates, and exfoliated-TMDC barrier [39] for graphene on a SiO₂ substrate.

The aforementioned works highlight the importance of growing a tunnel barrier that is atomically flat, homogeneously covering graphene with a uniform thickness, free from pinholes, devoid of the conductivity mismatch problem, and efficient in injection and detection of spin polarization in graphene. Among all the different tunnel barriers or interfacial layers proposed for studying spin injection in graphene, it was found that a thin layer of atomically flat hBN with a similar lattice structure as graphene can serve as an excellent tunnel barrier to overcome the aforementioned challenges [80, 82, 128, 132].

The promising nature of hBN as a tunnel barrier is revealed from the conductive AFM measurements of electron tunneling through thin layers of hBN [133], where it was shown that mono, bi, and tri-layers of exfoliated-hBN exhibit a homogeneously insulating behaviour across the flakes without any charged impurities and defects. Furthermore the breakdown voltage of hBN was found to increase with the number of layers [133], and the estimated dielectric breakdown strength was found to be [53, 133–136]  ∼0.8–1.2 V nm⁻¹. These results were further confirmed by Britnell et al [134], who reported that the hBN/graphene interface resistance increases exponentially with the number of hBN layers and the tunneling characteristics are confirmed by a nonlinear I–V behaviour (figure 3). These results also demonstrate the potential of atomically thin hBN to be used as ultra smooth and pinhole free tunnel barrier for spin injection into graphene. Moreover, first-principle calculations estimate that the efficiency of spin injection in Ni/hBN/graphene heterostructures can be achieved up to 100% with increasing the number of hBN layers [137].

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Yamaguchi et al [128] were the first to experimentally show electrical spin injection and detection through a monolayer exfoliated-hBN tunnel barrier in a bilayer graphene. However, the spin lifetime  ≈56 ps and spin polarization  ≈1–2% are of the same order of magnitude as that of devices with FM/graphene transparent contacts [101]. Besides small hBN crystalline flakes, the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) grown large-area hBN as a tunnel barrier for spin transport studies was also explored by Kamalakar et al [138] and Fu et al [139].

Kamalakar et al [130, 138] used CVD-hBN barriers with exfoliated-graphene on SiO₂/Si substrate and systematically investigated the spin transport in graphene for various $R_{{\rm c}} A$ product values of Co/CVD-hBN/graphene contacts ranging from transparent to high resistance, and showed that by increasing $R_{{\rm c}} A$, the spin lifetime enhanced up to 500 ps and spin polarization up to 14%, an order of magnitude higher compared to then previous attempts with exfoliated-hBN barriers [128]. In a parallel effort, Fu et al [139] studied the spin transport in large-scale devices with CVD-hBN barrier and CVD-graphene transport channel on SiO₂/Si substrates. Graphene with a monolayer CVD-hBN barrier [139] showed a small spin signal, whose magnitude is similar to that of obtained with a monolayer exfoliated-hBN barrier [128]. Whereas, graphene with a two-layer CVD-hBN barrier [139] resulted in relatively large spin signals (with polarization  ≈5%). However, the spin life time  ≈  260 ps is comparable to the devices with a bare exfoliated or CVD graphene on SiO₂/Si substrate [16, 119].

In another report, Kamalakar et al [131] observed the novel effect of spin signal inversion in graphene, for the first time, by varying the thickness(1–3 layers) of CVD-hBN barriers and the corresponding interface resistance of Co/CVD-hBN/graphene junctions. The enhanced magnitude of the spin polarization up to  ≈65% is an order of magnitude higher compared to then previously reported results with oxide barriers [10, 140] and hBN barriers [80, 128, 139]. Indeed, these results were further improved and confirmed by later efforts from other groups [6, 80, 82, 129, 141] in encapsulated graphene, establishing the fact that thicker hBN barriers would result in a larger values of spin lifetime and spin polarization.

A number of reports on spin transport studies in graphene with CVD-hBN tunnel barriers incorporated a bare SiO₂/Si substrate [130, 131, 138, 139]. Moreover, the PMMA assisted wet transfer of CVD-hBN could affect the quality of graphene. Therefore, in order to further improve the spin transport parameters while using the CVD-hBN barrier, it was encouraged [138] to use high mobility graphene such as graphene on hBN [5] or hBN encapsulated graphene [59]. Even though hBN substrate has not been reported to enhance the spin relaxation times in graphene compared to SiO₂/Si substrate [5], it can increase the diffusion constant $D_{{\rm s}}$ and thus spin relaxation length $\lambda_{{\rm s}}$ (=$\sqrt{D_{{\rm s}} \tau_{{\rm s}}}$). Gurram et al [6] studied the electrical spin injection and detection in graphene on a thick-exfoliated-hBN substrate using a layer-by-layer-stacked two-layer-CVD-hBN tunnel barrier (device A3 in figure 2). However, the mobility of graphene was found to be below 3400 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and the spin relaxation time lower than 400 ps and are comparable to the values reported by Kamalakar et al [131, 138]. Therefore, such low values of spin transport parameters point to the utmost importance of a clean transfer process using CVD materials.

In order to explore spin injection via hBN barrier in a cleaner environment, one can use the dry pick up and transfer method [81] for fabricating encapsulated graphene devices with exfoliated-hBN flakes. Early attempts to study the spin transport in hBN encapsulated graphene [59, 60] (device B2 in figure 2) resulted in an improved spin relaxation length up to 12 μm and spin lifetime up to 2 ns. Note however that these values correspond to the intrinsic values of the graphene in the hBN encapsulated region, but the effective spin relaxation time of the spin transport channel is reduced by the non-encapsulated regions [26, 59, 60, 95]. It indicates that, perhaps, a complete encapsulation of graphene will improve the spin transport, and provide access to the direct measurement of intrinsic spintronic properties of the encapsulated graphene.

Fully encapsulated graphene with various thick 2D materials has been studied for charge transport characteristics with 1D or quasi-1D contacts [77, 142]. The potential of 1D FM edge contacts (device A4 in figure 2) has only been recently explored [78, 79] for spin transport studies and these contacts are yet to be proven viable for efficient spin injection/detection in graphene. On the other hand, in order to use the conventional contact geometry, an atomically thin layer of hBN can be used as a top encapsulation layer (device A3 in figure 2). The thin-hBN layer can serve two purposes in this device geometry. First, as an encapsulation layer to protect the graphene channel from the lithography impurities, and second, as a tunnel barrier for the electrical spin injection and detection in graphene via ferromagnetic electrodes.

Gurram et al [80] reported spin transport in a new lateral spin valve device geometry (device A3 in figure 2), where graphene is fully encapsulated between two hBN flakes to overcome the challenges together due to the substrate, the tunnel barrier, and the inhomogeneity that can be introduced during sample preparation. In this device geometry, the charge mobility values (≈8200–11 800 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹) lie close to each other for different regions of the encapsulated graphene, implying a uniform charge transport across the graphene flake. Moreover, the spin transport measurements (figure 4(a)) resulted in consistent spin relaxation parameters which do not differ much for different regions in the same device. Such homogeneity is difficult to achieve in the partially hBN-encapsulated graphene device [59, 60, 95] with oxide barriers.

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Ferromagnetic tunnel contacts with a low value of $R_{{\rm c}} A$ product indicate the transparent nature of the barriers, generally attributed to the presence of pinholes [107]. Such behaviour is commonly observed with conventional oxide tunnel barriers and, as discussed before, is detrimental to the efficient spin injection due to a possibility of back-flow of the injected spins[107–110]. Moreover, low-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ contacts with conventional oxide tunnel barriers are reported to show spin transport only across small length scales which are limited to the injector-detector seperation due to spin absorption via pinholes in the contacts [107]. A fully hBN encapsulated graphene spin valve device [80] showed a long distance spin transport in the monolayer-hBN encapsulated graphene channel up to the length of 12.5 μm, while having multiple low-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ contacts [80] in the spin transport channel. Such behaviour was attributed to the combined effect of pinhole free nature of the monolayer-hBN barrier and a clean hBN/graphene interface [80].

Even after fully encapsulating graphene from the top with a monolayer-hBN and from the bottom with a thick-hBN, $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ of graphene is still lower than 300 ps [80, 128] which is comparable to $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ in graphene on SiO₂ or hBN [5], and the spin polarization is lower than 2% which is similar to the values obtained with conventional oxide barriers [140]. The limited values of the spin transport parameters are due to the combined effect of (i) low-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ values of FM/1L-hBN/graphene contacts resulting in a low spin injection polarization, and (ii) the proximity of polymer residues which are only one hBN layer away from graphene that could lead to spin scattering in graphene resulting in a low spin relaxation time. Therefore, increasing the thickness of hBN tunnel barrier should solve the problems due to the conductivity mismatch and the proximity of polymer residues.

According to Britnell et al [134], the $R_{{\rm c}} A$ product of contacts can be increased by increasing the number of layers of hBN tunnel barrier which can overcome the conductivity mismatch problem. By doing so, it is also estimated that up to 100% spin polarization can be achieved [137]. On the experimental side, it was demonstrated by Singh et al [129] that bilayer-hBN is a better choice for tunnel barrier than monolayer-hBN in order to achieve longer spin lifetimes exceeding nanoseconds in graphene and higher spin injection polarization values.

7.1. Bias induced spin injection and detection polarizations

Biasing ferromagnetic tunnel contacts for spin injection in graphene was predicted to show rich physics in terms of studying spin injection into graphene in the presence of electric field, and potentially inducing magnetic proximity exchange splitting in graphene [143, 144]. The first report on bias dependent spin injection polarization of hBN barriers [131] revealed a large magnitude of polarization up to 65% and also a novel sign inversion behaviour while varying the thickness of CVD-hBN barriers. In a recent experiment, Gurram et al [82] (figure 4(b)) showed that an unprecedented enhancement of differential spin polarization can be achieved by biasing the injector or detector contacts with bilayer-hBN tunnel barriers. The authors [82] reported that the application of bias across FM/bilayer-hBN/graphene/hBN contacts (figure 5(a)) resulted in surprisingly large values of differential spin injection $p_{{\rm in}}$ and detection $p_{{\rm d}}$ polarizations up to  ±100%, and a unique sign inversion of spin polarization as a function of bias, near zero bias. Moreover, unbiased spin polarizations of contacts were found to be both positive and negative (see figure 6).

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Later, same authors report that the bias-dependent $p_{{\rm in}}$ for high-$R_{{\rm c}} A$ contacts with two-layer-stacked-CVD-hBN tunnel barriers [6] was found to be different from the bilayer-hBN barrier [82] in two ways. First, there is no change in sign of $p_{{\rm in}}$ within the applied DC bias range of  ±0.3 V (figure 5(i)). Second, the magnitude of $p_{{\rm in}}$ increases only at higher negative bias close to  −0.3 V. This behaviour marks the different nature of bilayer-exfoliated-hBN [82] and two-layer-CVD-hBN [6] tunnel barriers with respect to the spin injection process. Moreover, these results emphasize the importance of the crystallographic orientation of the two layers of hBN tunnel barrier. The bias dependence of the spin polarization is different for different thicknesses of the hBN tunnel barrier [82, 131, 141] and needs to be understood within a proper theoretical framework.

7.2. Two-terminal spin valve and Hanle signals

Two-terminal spin injection and detection in a lateral spin valve device geometry is technologically more relevant than in a four-terminal spin valve geometry. Usually, it is difficult to measure spin-dependent signals in a two-terminal geometry either due to the presence of large charge current dependent background signal or due to low efficiency of the spin injector and detector contacts. The first two-terminal spin transport measurements in graphene were reported with permalloy(Py)/graphene transparent contacts [96] followed by three other studies reported with MgO [118] and Al₂O₃ tunnel barriers [13, 29]. However, the magnetoresistance effects could mimic these spin valve signals in the local measurement configuration. Moreover, none of these studies showed an evidence of unambiguous signature of the spin transport in the two-terminal configuration via Hanle spin precession measurements [13].

The recent report [82] showed that the bias-induced spin injection and detection polarizations of bilayer-hBN tunnel barrier contacts [82] are large enough (figure 6) to be able to detect spin transport in a two-terminal configuration with spin signals reaching up to 800 Ω and magnetoresistance ratio up to 2.7%. Moreover, the authors also observed unambiguous evidence of spin transport in the two-terminal measurement geometry via Hanle spin precession measurements using the bilayer-hBN tunnel barrier contacts [141] (figure 7(b)). This is the first demonstration of a two-terminal Hanle signal. However, this has been only one experimental report so far and there is a need for more experiments to establish the potential of hBN barriers for two-terminal spin valve applications.

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In this section we describe the current challenges in elucidating the spin relaxation mechanisms in graphene in heterostructures with hBN. Spin-relaxation in graphene is usually analyzed by considering the presence of EY or DP mechanisms, which relate the spin-relaxation time to the momentum scattering time of electrons in graphene. For realistic values of $\tau_{{\rm p}}$ and spin–orbit coupling strength, these mechanisms estimate $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ in the order of microseconds [1, 2]. However, for ultraclean hBN encapsulated samples, where one can minimize the effect of substrate and lithography induced impurities, the best obtained $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ is 12.6 ns at high carrier densities [62], along the lines of the EY spin-relaxation mechanism. The obtained value is still two orders lower than the expected $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ in presence of only the EY mechanism and indicates the role of additional spin-relaxation mechanisms which have not been considered so far in describing the spin-relaxation in graphene.

Theoretically, Tuan et al [22] studied the spin dynamics and relaxation in clean graphene to understand the effect of substrate induced charge inhomogeneities such as electron–hole puddles on the spin relaxation mechanism. For the case of SiO₂ substrates, the authors numerically demonstrated the presence of the DP mechanism due to random spin dephasing by the electron–hole puddles. For substrates with less inhomogeneities, such as hBN, spin relaxation for graphene on hBN is caused by substrate induced broadening in the spin precession frequency where $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ follows $\tau_{{\rm p}}$. For higher $\tau_{{\rm p}}$, spins relax under the influence of substrate induced Rashba spin–orbit coupling. Therefore, for a graphene on hBN susbstrate, spin relaxation is expected by the energy broadening and due to the substrate-induced SOC rather than the influence of the impurities. Experimentally, Zomer et al [5] studied the spin relaxation in relation to the quality of graphene on hBN device which is contaminated with the polymer residues on the top-surface of graphene (figure 8(a)). The authors [5] show that the spin transport data is best described by the equal contributions of EY and DP spin relaxation mechanisms, indicating that neither of these mechanisms dominate the spin relaxation in graphene on hBN in the presence of polymer residues.

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In a different theoretical framework, Fabian et al [145] explored the role of impurities and proposed that resonant scattering is a dominant spin relaxation mechanism in graphene where magnetic impurities present even in a small amount can influence spin transport drastically. Experimental attempts in this direction via weak-localization [146] and spin-noise measurements [147, 148] suggest the same. There has been only one spin-transport experiment [93] where the authors could access the very high carrier density regime in bilayer graphene(∼10¹³ cm⁻²). Here, at low carrier densities $\tau_{{\rm s}} - \tau_{{\rm p}}$ behavior shows the DP mechanism as expected in clean-graphene systems, and $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ increases at higher carrier concentrations, along the line of the resonant-scattering mechanism. However, it should be noted that there has been no general consensus on the exact nature of spin relaxation mechanism in bilayer-graphene [3, 145].

The role of spin-pseudospin coupling in graphene was also proposed as a possible spin-relaxation mechanism in clean graphene samples [149]. It is possible to probe signatures of such mechanism in fully hBN encapsulated graphene devices where impurities do not play a major role. In order to reduce the size of the graphene regions exposed to polymer residues, a full encapsulation geometry [80, 82] (device A3 in figure 2) can be adopted.

Even though the top-layer of a thin(1-2L) hBN tunnel barrier in a fully hBN encapsulated graphene spin valve device [80, 82] acts as an encapsulation layer, the resulting charge and spin transport properties of graphene are not optimal. Despite finding a suitable device geometry (device A3 in figure 2) to enhance the differential spin injection efficiency up to 100% in a fully hBN encapsulated graphene, the spin lifetime obtained only up to 0.9–1.86 ns with bilayer hBN tunnel barriers [82, 129] (figure 4), are still smaller by two orders of magnitude than the predicted value for pristine graphene [1, 2]. An interesting study of spin relaxation in graphene with mono and bilayer of hBN encapsulating tunnel barrier is reported by Singh et al [129]. The authors report $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ above 1 ns for bilayer-hBN encapsulation while it is below 0.6 ns for the monolayer encapsulation. These observations indicate that a very thin (∼0.3–0.7 nm) top-layer of single or bilayer-hBN tunnel barrier might not provide sufficient encapsulation for graphene, possibly due to poor screening of the polymer contaminations on the top-surface. Moreover, the screening effect is stronger with the bilayer than the monolayer-hBN. Also, the contact induced relaxation is expectedly lower with the bilayer-hBN barrier due to its higher $R_{{\rm c}} A$ product. In fact, these observations corroborate with the independent studies from Gurram et al who reported $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ around 0.3 ns, 0.9 ns, and 1.3 ns with mono [80], bi [82], and tri-layers (figure 4(c)) of hBN barrier top encapsulation, respectively (figure 4). From these reports it seems that increasing the thickness of the top encapsulated tunnel barrier can enhance the screening of the contaminations and improve $\tau_{{\rm s}}$ of the encapsulated graphene. In fact, this behaviour corroborates with the earlier works of Drögeler et al [58, 62] with the bottom-up fabricated devices (device C3 in figure 2) where the use of a large and thick hBN flake for covering the graphene flake to avoid the contact with solvents and polymer residues resulted in spin relaxation times of 12.6 ns, the highest reported value to date.

However, the currently existing literature on fully hBN encapsulated graphene devices [80, 82] is limited and does not report the carrier density dependence of the spin relaxation time which is necessary for investigating the spin relaxation mechanism [5, 93]. Therefore, there is a need for more experiments to confirm the hBN barrier thickness dependence on spin transport in graphene and elucidate the intrinsic spin relaxation mechanism.

In order to reach the ultimate goals of spintronics devices [10, 11], several recently emerged spintronics phenomena need to be understood and incorporated in future graphene spin transport studies. In the following, we describe a few prospects which can be utilized in graphene-hBN heterostructures to facilitate the progress of graphene spintronics in the near future.

9.1. Addressing current challenges

9.2. Spin filtering across hBN/graphene interfaces

9.3. Spin gating

9.4. Spin drift

9.5. Proximity effects

9.6. Large-scale devices

9.7. Conclusions

This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 785219, supported by the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials and is (partly) financed by the NWO Spinoza prize awarded to Prof B J van Wees by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). We would also like to thank Dr M Venkata Kamalakar, Prof B Beschoten and Ingla-Aynés for providing the original figures.