Feasible Nanometric Magnetoresistance Devices

The electrical conductance through a ring is sensitive to the threading magnetic flux. It contains a component that is periodic with an Aharonov-Bohm (AB) period equal to the quantum flux. In molecular/atomic loops on the nanometer scale, encircling very small areas, the AB period involves unrealistically huge magnetic fields. We show that despite this, moderate magnetic fields can have a strong impact on the conductance. By controlling the lifetime of the conduction electron through a pre-selected single state that is well separated from other states due to the quantum confinement effect, we demonstrate that magnetic fields comparable to one Tesla can be used to switch a nanometric AB device. Using atomistic electronic structure calculations, we show that such effects can be expected for loops composed of monovalent metal atoms (quantum corals). Our findings suggest that future fabrication of nanometric magnetoresistance devices is feasible.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Edge Effects in Finite Elongated Graphene Nanoribbons

We analyze the relevance of finite-size effects to the electronic structure of long graphene nanoribbons using a divide and conquer density functional approach. We find that for hydrogen terminated graphene nanoribbons most of the physical features appearing in the density of states of an infinite graphene nanoribbon are recovered at a length of 40 nm. Nevertheless, even for the longest systems considered (72 nm long) pronounced edge effects appear in the vicinity of the Fermi energy. The weight of these edge states scales inversely with the length of the ribbon and they are expected to become negligible only at ribbons lengths of the order of micrometers. Our results indicate that careful consideration of finite-size and edge effects should be applied when designing new nanoelectronic devices based on graphene nanoribbons. These conclusions are expected to hold for other one-dimensional systems such as carbon nanotubes, conducting polymers, and DNA molecules.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure