Engineering the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Graphene with Uniaxial Strains

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the manipulation of the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) in graphene by means of the uniaxial strain. The values of Chern number and Hall conductance demonstrate that the strained graphene in presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and exchange field, for vanishing intrinsic spin-orbit coupling, possesses non-trivial topological phase which is robust against the direction and modulus of the strain. Besides, we also find that the interplay between Rashba and intrinsic spin-orbit couplings results in a topological phase transition in the strained graphene. Remarkably, as the strain strength is increased beyond approximately 7%, the critical parameters of the exchange field for triggering the quantum anomalous Hall phase transition show distinct behaviors - decrease (increase) for strains along zigzag (armchair) direction. Our findings open up a new platform for manipulation of the QAHE by an experimentally accessible strain deformation of the graphene structure, with promising application on novel quantum electronic devices with high energy efficiency performance.

Discussions improved and new references added. Comments/Suggestions are highly welcome

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Colloquium: Topological Band Theory
• Zero-field and time-reserval-symmetry-broken topological phase transitions in graphene
• Controllable Spin-Charge Transport in Strained Graphene Nanoribbon Devices
• Modified spin-orbit couplings in uniaxially strained graphene
• Control of valley optical conductivity and topological phases in buckled hexagonal lattice by orientation of in-plane magnetic field
• Topological nature of in-gap bound states in disordered large-gap monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides
• Magnetoelectric torque and edge currents in spin-orbit coupled graphene nanoribbons