Magnetism of solids resulting from spin polarization of p orbitals

Magnetism in systems that do not contain transition metal or rare earth ions was recently observed or predicted to exist in a wide variety of systems. We summarize both experimental and theoretical results obtained for ideal bulk II-V and II-IV compounds, molecular crystals containing O-2 or N-2 molecules as structural units, as well as for carbon-based materials such as graphite and graphene nanoribbons. Magnetism can be an intrinsic property of a perfect crystal, or it can be induced by non-magnetic dopants or defects. In the case of vacancies, spin polarization is local and results in their high spin states. The non-vanishing spin polarization is shown to originate in the strong spin polarization of the 2p shell of light atoms from the second row of the periodic table.