Highly tunable spin-dependent electron transport through carbon atomic chains connecting two zigzag graphene nanoribbons

Details Highly tunable spin-dependent electron transport through carbon atomic chains connecting two zigzag graphene nanoribbons Highly tunable spin-dependent electron transport through carbon atomic chains connecting two zigzag graphene nanoribbons

2012-02-24

arxiv.org/abs/1202.5415v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

6 pages, 9 figures

Scientific paper

Motivated by recent experiments of successfully carving out stable carbon atomic chains from graphene [Meyer et al. Nature (London) 454, 319 (2008); Jin et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 205501 (2009)] we investigate a device structure of a carbon chain connecting two zigzag graphene nanoribbons with highly tunable spin-dependent transport properties. Our calculation based on the non-equilibrium Green's function approach combined with the density functional theory shows that the transport behavior is sensitive to the spin configuration of the leads and the contact position in the gap. A connection in the middle gives an overall good coupling except for around the Fermi energy where the leads with anti-parallel spins create a small transport gap while the leads with parallel spins give a finite density of states and induce an even-odd oscillation in conductance in terms of the number of atoms in the carbon chain. On the other hand, a connection at the edge shows a transport behavior associated with the spin-polarized edge states, presenting sharp pure $\alpha$-spin and $\beta$-spin peaks beside the Fermi energy in the transmission function. This makes it possible to realize on-chip interconnects or spintronic devices by simply changing the spin configuration of the leads and the position of the connection.

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