Doping graphene with manganese-based single molecule magnets: Electronic properties

Graphene has been intensively studied in the past few years because of its extraordinary properties. Graphene has a long spin coherence length making it very promising material for spintronic applications. Single molecule magnets (SMMs) are also good candidates for applications in big data storage and quantum computing. The goal of this dissertation is to study the electrical properties of graphene after doping it with Mn12-based SMMs. These electronic studies include Hall measurement on both pristine and drop-casted doped graphene samples to investigate the charge transfer between graphene and the magnetic molecules, magnetoresistance measurement at room temperature and also weak localization correction to magnetoconductance at low temperatures to examine the effect of doping on different scattering processes in graphene.;The change in the electronic transport properties of graphene after interaction with Mn12-benzoate and the ligand of this SMM alone (benzoic acid) at room temperature, is explored in chapter three. Hall data shows that Mn 12-benzoate molecules withdraw electrons from graphene and make it more p-doped whereas the ligand molecules give electrons to graphene leading to the conclusion that manganese ions play an important role in charge transfer process.;To investigate the effect of ligand on the interaction of graphene with SMMs, the transport properties of graphene before and after doping with another member of Mn12 SMMs' family, Mn12 --dichloroacetate, is provided in the fourth chapter. Again, the Hall data is used to survey the charge transfer direction which for this SMM, it behaves similarly to Mn12-benzoate SMM with only a difference. Finally, in the fifth chapter, weak localization correction to magnetoconductance at 5K has been used to investigate the effect of doping graphene with both Mn12-based SMMs and ligand molecules alone, on the scattering processes occurring in graphene.;We provide an introduction to the fundamental physics of graphene in the first chapter and an introduction to Mn12 family of SMMs is discussed in the second chapter. In this chapter, our magnetic ac susceptibility measurement for a crystalline powder sample of Mn12-dichloroacetate is presented to study the magnetization relaxation dynamics of this SMM at low temperature range.