Spin-orbit coupling prevents spin channel suppression of transition metal atoms on armchair graphene nanoribbons

W. Y. Rojas, Cesar E.P. Villegas, A. R. Rocha

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the spin-dependent electronic and transport properties of armchair graphene nanoribbons including spin-orbit coupling due to the presence of nickel and iridium adatoms by using ab initio calculations within the spin-polarized density functional theory and non-equilibrium Green's function formalism. Our results indicate that the intensity of the spin-flip precession is a direct consequence of the relaxed adsorption sites of the adatoms. We point out that d orbitals of Ni and Ir result in strong dependence on the spin-conserved and spin-flip transmission probabilities. In particular, we show that the presence of spin-orbit coupling can lead to an enhancement of the transmission probabilities especially around resonances arising due to weak coupling with specific orbitals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)29826-29832
Number of pages7
JournalPhysical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Volume20
Issue number47
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research received financial support from the Brazilian agencies CAPES, CNPq and FAPESP grant number 2012/ 24227-1. A. R. R. acknowledges the support from the ICTP-SAIRF (the FAPESP project 2011/11973-4) and the ICTP-Simons Foundation Associate Scheme. This work uses the computational resources from the GRID-UNESP and the CENAPAD/SP.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 the Owner Societies.

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