PHYSICAL REVIEW B 88, 035408 (2013)

SCI

Aharonov-Bohm effect and giant magnetoresistance in graphene nanoribbon rings

V. Hung Nguyen, Y. M. Niquet, and P. Dollfus

We report a numerical study on the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect and giant magnetoresistance in rectangular rings made of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). We show that in the low-energy regime where only the first subband of contact GNRs contributes to the transport, the transmission probability can be strongly modulated, i.e., almost fully suppressed, when tuning a perpendicular magnetic field. On this basis, strong AB oscillations with giant negative magnetoresistance can be achieved at room temperature. The magnetoresistance reaches thousands of percent in perfect GNR rings and a few hundred percent with edge-disordered GNRs. The design rules to observe such strong effects are also discussed. Our study hence provides guidelines for further investigations of the AB interference and to obtain high magnetoresistance in graphene devices.

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.035408