Spin currents in rough graphene nanoribbons: Universal fluctuations and spin injection

Abstract

We investigate spin conductance in zigzag graphene nanoribbons and propose a spin injection mechanism based only on graphitic nanostructures. We find that nanoribbons with atomically straight, symmetric edges show zero spin conductance, but nonzero spin Hall conductance. Only nanoribbons with asymmetrically shaped edges give rise to a finite spin conductance and can be used for spin injection into graphene. Furthermore, nanoribbons with rough edges exhibit mesoscopic spin conductance fluctuations with a universal value of $\mathrm{rms}{G}_{\mathrm{s}}\approx 0.4e/4\pi$.

4 pages, 5 figures, PdfLaTeX, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (5)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Graphene Spin Transistor
• Stabilization mechanism of edge states in graphene
• Spatial distribution of local currents of massless Dirac fermions in quantum transport through graphene nanoribbons
• Electronic transport in normal-conductor/graphene/normal-conductor junctions and conditions for insulating behavior at a finite charge-carrier density