Nanospintronics with carbon nanotubes

Audrey Cottet, Takis Kontos, Sangeeta Sahoo, Hon Tin Man, Mahn-Soo Choi, Wolfgang Belzig, Christoph Bruder, Alberto Morpurgo, Christian Schoenenberger

Published 2007-03-18Version 1

One of the actual challenges of spintronics is the realization of a spin-transistor allowing to control spin transport through an electrostatic gate. In this review, we report on different experiments which demonstrate a gate control of spin transport in a carbon nanotube connected to ferromagnetic leads. We also discuss some theoretical approaches which can be used to analyze spin transport in these systems. We emphasize the roles of the gate-tunable quasi-bound states inside the nanotube and the coherent spin-dependent scattering at the interfaces between the nanotube and its ferromagnetic contacts.