The possibility of utilizing the rich spin-dependent properties of graphene has attracted much attention in the pursuit of spintronics advances. The promise of high-speed and low-energy-consumption devices motivates the search for layered structures that stabilize chiral spin textures such as topologically protected skyrmions. Here we demonstrate that chiral spin textures are induced at graphene/ferromagnetic metal interfaces. Graphene is a weak spin–orbit coupling material and is generally not expected to induce a sufficient Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction to affect magnetic chirality. We demonstrate that indeed graphene does induce a type of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction due to the Rashba effect. First-principles calculations and experiments using spin-polarized electron microscopy show that this graphene-induced Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction can have a similar magnitude to that at interfaces with heavy metals. This work paves a path towards two-dimensional-material-based spin–orbitronics.

在追求自旋电子学方面的进展中，利用石墨烯丰富的自旋依赖性的可能性引起了人们的广泛关注。高速，低能耗设备的前景促使人们寻求稳定手性自旋纹理的分层结构，例如拓扑受保护的机体。在这里，我们证明在石墨烯/铁磁金属界面处诱导了手性自旋织构。石墨烯是一种弱的自旋-轨道耦合材料，通常预计不会引起足够的Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya相互作用来影响磁手性。我们证明，由于拉什巴效应，石墨烯确实会诱导一种Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya相互作用。使用自旋极化电子显微镜进行的第一性原理计算和实验表明，这种石墨烯诱导的Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya相互作用可以具有与重金属界面相似的强度。这项工作为基于二维材料的自旋或双生电子学铺平了道路。