Interplay between symmetry and spin-orbit coupling in graphene nanoribbons

Abstract

We study the electronic structure of chiral and achiral graphene nanoribbons with symmetric edges, including curvature and spin-orbit effects. Curved ribbons show spin-split bands, whereas flat ribbons present spin-degenerate bands. We show that this effect is due to the breaking of spatial inversion symmetry in curved graphene nanoribbons, while flat ribbons with symmetric edges possess an inversion center, regardless of their having chiral or achiral edges. We find an enhanced edge-edge coupling and a substantial gap in narrow chiral nanoribbons, which is not present in zigzag ribbons of similar width. We attribute these size effects to the mixing of the sublattices imposed by the edge geometry, yielding a distinct behavior of chiral ribbons from those with pure zigzag edges.

Revised final version, 8 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Colloquium: Spintronics in graphene and other two-dimensional materials
• Topological phase transition in chiral graphene nanoribbons: from edge bands to end states
• Ab initio spin-flip conductance of hydrogenated graphene nanoribbons: Spin-orbit interaction and scattering with local impurity spins
• Electronic conductance of twisted bilayer nanoribbon flakes
• Spin-polarized currents in corrugated graphene nanoribbons
• All-electrical production of spin-polarized currents in carbon nanotubes: Rashba spin-orbit interaction
• Charge-spin interconversion in graphene-based systems from density functional theory