2022/03/27 by Ning Wu, Wu, Ning, Bang‐Gui Liu +1
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Graphene research and applications #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum and electron transport phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.14288
openalex publication_date 2022/03/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is well-known that ferromagnetism can be realized along the zigzag graphene nanoribbon edges, but the armchair graphene nanoribbon edges (AGNEs) are nonmagnetic. Here, we achieve Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chains through edge reconstruction along the AGNEs. The reconstructed edge consists of pentagonal carbon rings or a hybrid of pentagonal and hexagonal carbon rings. The resultant nanoribbons are narrow-gap semiconductors and the band edge states are either spin-degenerate edge states or nonmagnetic bulk states. The spin is located on the outermost carbon of the pentagonal ring, and the inter-spin exchange is the nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic interaction. For finite chain lengthes or nonzero magnetization, there are nonzero spin Drude weights and thus ballistic quantum spin transport can be achieved along the reconstructed edges, These could be used for quantum spin information transfer and spintronic applications.