ABSTRACT
Spintronics seek to exploit electron spins in addition to the electrical charges for logic and memory devices, and it ignites a revolution in information processing (Wolf et al. 2001). Recently,
10.1 Introduction 257 10.2 Intrinsic Edge Magnetism in BN Nanomaterials 258 10.3 Carbon-Doping-Induced Magnetism in BN Materials 260 10.4 Magnetism Induced from Chemical Functionalization 260 10.5 Vacancy Magnetism 264 10.6 Adatom-Induced Magnetism 264 10.7 Conclusion and Perspectives 266 Acknowledgments 268 References 268
magnetism is found to be induced to CNTs (graphene) when they are unzipped (cut) into 1D graphene nanoribbon (GNNR; Son et al. 2006, Ugeda et al. 2010). One interesting application of the magnetism in zigzag GNNRs is the novel half-metallicity under an electric eld, which has opened an exciting pathway for the development of next-generation metal-free spintronics (Son et al. 2006). Structurally, BN is a very close analogue of the carbon system, and magnetism could also be created along edge sites in low-dimensional BN nanostructures, which has not been explored much compared to the carbon system.
