Professor Irina Grigorieva
Professor of Physics/Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Science and Applications of Graphene and Related Nanomaterials: electronic and magnetic properties of graphene and its derivatives
I developed a passion for science when I came to do a PhD at the research institute in Chernogolovka. It was very small, in the middle of a forest. I just fell in love with it. With Russian physicists and scientists in general, knowledge was king - you had to know not only your subject, but also history, poetry, or the origin of life; you were expected to be well- read, to know the writers. There was an air of cleverness about it and I loved it, I absolutely loved it.
Carbon in principle cannot be magnetic but it turns out that graphene can. In graphene the electrons live in two symmetric triangular sublattices made of carbon atoms. If you break that symmetry, and we can by removing carbon atoms or attaching foreign atoms to it, then some of the electrons acquire a magnetic moment. That is, they become tiny magnetic fields.
You can then align these magnetic moments so that graphene strongly responds to an external magnetic field. Think of a steel nail that makes the magnetic field stronger when placed next to a magnet. So, defects make graphene paramagnetic. As electrons in graphene interact very strongly, they pass information from one magnetic moment to another, and when we have sufficient numbers of symmetry-breaking defects, these magnetic moments can start to interact, making graphene truly magnetic with its own magnetic field. This of course would be wonderful as we would then have a material that is transparent, conductive and magnetic at the same time. In terms of device physics this would create many new opportunities.