Issue 45, 2017, Issue in Progress

Thermal spin current in zigzag silicene nanoribbons with sp2–sp3 edges

Abstract

Using first-principles calculations combined with non-equilibrium Green's function method, we study thermal spin transport of zigzag silicene nanoribbons (ZSiNRs) with unsymmetrical sp2–sp3 edges under a temperature gradient but no bias. Both in the linear and non-linear response regimes, we have opposite flow directions for different spins, which leads unambiguously to spin current. Most important is that pure spin current can be achieved and basically no tuning of the chemical potential μ is needed since the neutral point is very close to μ = 0 (the chemical potential located at the Fermi level) and this fact holds for a very large temperature range studied (110 ≤ TL ≤ 300 K). The direction of charge current induced by a temperature gradient can be easily reversed by tuning the chemical potential, while the spin current is almost unchanged in the same process, indicating that the spin current is robust and stable. In addition, both spin current and charge current present a thermoelectric diode behavior for TL ≤ 200 K in the nonlinear response regime. These findings suggest that the unsymmetrically sp2–sp3 terminated ZSiNRs are promising materials for spin caloritronic devices.

Graphical abstract: Thermal spin current in zigzag silicene nanoribbons with sp2–sp3 edges

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Apr 2017
Accepted
20 May 2017
First published
26 May 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2017,7, 28124-28129

Thermal spin current in zigzag silicene nanoribbons with sp2–sp3 edges

P. Jiang, X. Tao, H. Hao, L. Song, X. Zheng and Z. Zeng, RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 28124 DOI: 10.1039/C7RA04477A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements