ABSTRACT
It is textbook knowledge that the free electron density of states
(DOS) in two dimensions is energy independent, being dramatically
different from DOS in 3D (square root of energy) and in the 1D
(where DOS is one over square root of energy for each electron
channel). The 2D systems in the presence of external magnetic
field are known to support dissipationless chiral edge currents
which lead to so-called quantum Hall effect (Yennie, 1987). Charge
and spin edge currents flow separately in quantum spin Hall
effect in 2D topological insulators (TI) (Maekawa, 2012) providing
opportunities for next generation spintronic devices. Peculiarities of
the spin transport in 2D materials such as graphene or transition
metal dichalcogenide monolayers (TMDC) are anomalously long
mean free path and spin relaxation times due to negligible spin
orbit coupling (Duan et al., 2015; Peres, 2010; Schmidt et al., 2015).
In order to construct spintronic devices one should find a ways to
modify in a controlled way locally Rashba SOI (Manchon, 2015),
for example by using heavy ad-atoms or placing graphene on MoS2 (Gmitra and Fabian, 2015). This chapter briefly summarizes the
current state of the art of 2D materials as an essential part of
