Defect controlled magnetism in FeP/graphene/Ni(111)

Spin switching of organometallic complexes by ferromagnetic surfaces is an important topic in the area of molecular nanospintronics. Moreover, graphene has been shown as a 2D surface for physisorption of molecular magnets and strain engineering on graphene can tune the spin state of an iron porphyrin (FeP) molecule from S = 1 to S = 2. Our ab initio density functional calculations suggest that a pristine graphene layer placed between a Ni(111) surface and FeP yields an extremely weak exchange interaction between FeP and Ni whereas the introduction of defects in graphene shows a variety of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions. Moreover, these defects control the easy axes of magnetization, strengths of magnetic anisotropy energies and spin-dipolar contributions. Our study suggests a new way of manipulating molecular magnetism by defects in graphene and hence has the potential to be explored in designing spin qubits to realize logic operations in molecular nanospintronics.