2014/03/17 by M. I. Alomar, David Sánchez, David Sanchez · 31 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Conductance #Electron #Fermi energy #Graphene #Graphene research and applications #Materials science #Orbit (dynamics) #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Scattering #Seebeck coefficient #Spin (aerodynamics) #Spin–orbit interaction #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #Thermoelectric effect #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.89.115422
published in Physical Review B 89(11) (American Physical Society) · 9 pages, 8 figures. The Eq.(27) and the definition of charge thermopower have been corrected
openalex publication_date 2014/03/17 · arxiv created 2014/12/04 · arxiv updated 2014/12/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the transport properties of a graphene layer in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Quite generally, spin-orbit interactions induce spin splittings and modifications of the graphene band structure. We calculate within the scattering approach the linear electric and thermoelectric responses of a clean sample when the Rashba coupling is localized around a finite region. We find that the thermoelectric conductance, unlike its electric counterpart, is quite sensitive to external modulations of the Fermi energy. Therefore, our results suggest that thermocurrent measurements may serve as a useful tool to detect nonhomogeneous spin-orbit interactions present in a graphene-based device. Furthermore, we find that the junction thermopower is largely dominated by an intrinsic term independently of the spin-orbit potential scattering. We discuss the possibility of canceling the intrinsic thermopower by resolving the Seebeck coefficient in the subband space. This causes unbalanced populations of electronic modes which can be tuned with external gate voltages or applied temperature biases.