Graphene

Researchers from Delft University of Technology demonstrated a device that generates electrical currents with a precisely controlled number of electrons at each valley. The researchers say that when electrons are squeezed through a narrow channel, they emerge as two jets which are valley polarized. By steering these jets with a magnetic field, the researchers can regulate which jet enters through a second opening, gaining control on how many electrons end up in a specific valley.

The researchers, led by Josep Ingla-Aynes, based their device on bi-layer graphene.

Researchers from the Max Born and Max Planck institutes have shown that the few cycle limit of circularly polarized light is imbued with an emergent vectorial character that allows direct coupling to the valley current. The underlying physical mechanism involves the emergence of a momentum space valley dipole, the orientation and magnitude of which allows complete control over the direction and magnitude of the valley current.

The researchers demonstrate this effect via minimal tight-binding models both for the visible spectrum gaps of the transition metal dichalcogenides as well as the infrared gaps of biased bilayer graphene.

Researchers from Rice University suggest that growing graphene sheets on curved surface may be a useful technique to create valleytronics devices.

The peaks and valleys in the resulting "deformed" graphene sheet would create channels that will feature small magnetic fields. It will also be a way to achieve a Hall Effect, useful for valleytronics devices.

Researchers from Germany (Max-Born Institute) and India (IIT Bombay) have shown that it is possible to realize a valleytronics device in pristine graphene.

Graphene (and other graphene-like systems) feature an extra degree of electron freedom, or valley pseudo-spin. This has interesting potential in valleytronics applications, but the implementation of valleytronics ideas has been so far limited to gapped graphene-like semiconducting 2D materials, most commonly transition metal dichalcogenides, and has never been attempted in pristine graphene, because graphene monolayers have zero bandgap, zero Berry curvature, and thus nearly identical valleys,.

Scientists from several research institutes in Germany and the UK have demonstrated that few-cycle linearly polarized pulses can induce a high degree of valley polarization.

The mechanism to induce such polarization does not rely on the optical selection rules, and therefore can be in principle used in inversion symmetric materials, such as TMD bilayers or graphene. This could enable the design of ultrafast valleytronic devices.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and Aalto University showed that sandwiching two slightly rotated layers of graphene between a ferromagnetic insulator provides a unique setting for new electronic states.

The combination of ferromagnets, graphene's twist engineering, and relativistic effects force the "valley" property to dominate the electrons behavior in the material. In particular, the researchers showed how these valley-only states can be tuned electrically, providing a materials platform in which valley-only states can be generated.

The International Institute of Physics in Brazil recently uploaded this interesting talk by Stephan Roche from the ICREA and CINN who discusses valleytronics in 2D materials (such as graphene):

This talk was given as part of the IIP's 2D Materials: From Fundamentals to Spintronics workshop which took place in early October.

Researchers from Penn State University developed a topological valley valve, which controls electron flow. Using electron "beam splitters", the researchers achieved high-level of electron control.

Using bilayer graphene, the researcher created electron waveguides created by gates defined with extreme precision using state-of-the-art electron beam lithography.By controlling the topology of the waveguides (the valley-momentum locking of the electrons), the researchers can control electron flow.

Researchers from Ohio University have found a simple yet effective way to achieve current valley separation in graphene. The idea is based on inversion symmetry, or the creation of properly oriented obstacles that break an important symmetry of the graphene crystal.

This is a theoretical work, but the researchers say that the results could enable seperating and controling valley currents in graphene in real experiments which will hopefully lead to the utilization of graphene in future valleytronics devices.