Carbon nanoelectronics: unzipping tubes into graphene ribbons

TL;DR

This paper investigates the transport properties of partially unzipped carbon nanotubes, revealing their potential as valley filters and magnetoresistive devices, and explores their use in designing mixed graphene/nanotube electronic components.

Contribution

It introduces novel carbon nanostructures combining nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons, demonstrating their unique transport properties and potential for device applications.

Findings

Graphene nanoribbons act as perfect valley filters at certain energies.

Partially unzipped nanotubes function as magnetoresistive devices with high MR.

Structures behave as optimal contacts for each other, enabling new device designs.

Abstract

We report on the transport properties of novel carbon nanostructures made of partially unzipped carbon nanotubes, which can be regarded as a seamless junction of a tube and a nanoribbon. We find that graphene nanoribbons act at certain energy ranges as a perfect valley filters for carbon nanotubes, with the maximum possible conductance. Our results show that a partially unzipped carbon nanotube is a magnetoresistive device, with a very large value of the magnetoresistance. We explore the properties of several structures combining nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons, demonstrating that they behave as optimal contacts for each other, and opening a new route for the design of mixed graphene/nanotube devices.