Graphite has been known to mankind since ancient times and has been intensively studied for more than 80 years. It is also the archetype of semimetals (metals with a small Fermi surface) and the mother compound of graphene and other two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures. Albeit we have a vast knowledge about graphite, it turns out that its spin-relaxation properties are poorly understood and a recent revision of the system [1] yielded the surprisingly long 100 ns spin-lifetime in this material. This is an order of magnitude longer than the world-record holding bilayer graphene. It turns out that previous spin-relaxation studies were in fact not interpreted with the correct description and also that graphite has a hitherto unexplored symmetry which inevitably leads to this long spin-relaxation time. We speculate that this enables bulk graphite to become a viable candidate for using the electron spins as information carrier units in future spintronics devices.

 

[1]: B. G. Márkus et al. "Ultralong 100 ns spin relaxation time in graphite at room temperature", Nat. Comm. 14, 2831 (2023)