Spin-dependent transport through interacting graphene armchair nanoribbons

TL;DR

This paper explores how spin-dependent interactions and Coulomb effects influence electron transport in finite graphene armchair nanoribbons, revealing unique conductance phenomena and magnetic field responses.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of spin effects and Coulomb interactions in graphene nanoribbons, highlighting novel negative differential conductance and tunneling magneto-resistance behaviors.

Findings

Negative differential conductance in parallel spin-polarized contacts

Absence of such features in anti-parallel configuration

Magnetic field modifies transport characteristics

Abstract

We investigate spin effects in transport across fully interacting, finite size graphene armchair nanoribbons (ACNs) contacted to collinearly spin-polarized leads. In such systems, the presence of short ranged Coulomb interaction between bulk states and states localized at the ribbon ends leads to novel spin-dependent phenomena. Specifically, the total spin of the low energy many-body states is conserved during tunneling but that of the bulk and end states is not. As a consequence, in the single-electron regime, dominated by Coulomb blockade phenomena, we find pronounced negative differential conductance features for ACNs contacted to parallel polarized leads. These features are however absent for an anti-parallel contact configuration, which in turn leads within a certain gate and bias voltage region to a negative tunneling magneto-resistance. Moreover, we analyze the changes in the transport characteristics under the influence of an external magnetic field.