Spin orbit interaction in nanotubes

Abstract

In recent years, silicene, germanene, and stanene have received considerable attention due to their possibilities to show a spin Hall effect. Nanoribbons made of these materials are expected to have topologically protected states. In this work, we study the electronic properties of nanotubes made of Si, Ge, Sn, and functionalized Sn. The main difference between these materials and graphene is the relevance of spin-orbit interaction. The lack of edge states in a seamless tube eliminates the possibility to find a topological edge state. The spin-orbit interaction breaks the degeneracy of Dirac's cones and eliminates the chances of finding a metal nanotube. As a consequence, this transforms all nanotubes with spin-orbit interaction in trivial band insulators. We focus our attention on two features. First, we study the energy band gap as a function of the diameter of the nanotubes. Then, we concentrate on controlling the band gap of a nanotube by applying an external radial electric field.

8 pages with 8 figures

References in corpus (10)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Coupling of Spin and Orbital Motion of Electrons in Carbon Nanotubes
• Large spin-orbit coupling in carbon nanotubes
• The Physics of Kondo Impurities in Graphene
• Is Silicene the Next Graphene?
• Kondo versus indirect exchange: the role of the lattice and the actual range of RKKY interactions in real materials
• Full electrostatic control over polarized currents through spin-orbital Kondo effect
• Spatial structure of correlations around a quantum impurity at the edge of a two-dimensional topological insulator
• Majorana correlations in quantum impurities coupled to a topological wire
• Nanotubes as Sinks for Quantum Particles