Spin-dependent transport through interacting graphene armchair nanoribbons

We investigate spin effects in transport across fully interacting, finite size graphene armchair nanoribbons (ACNs) contacted to collinearly spin-polarized leads.In such systems, the presence of short-ranged Coulomb interaction between bulk states and states localized at the ribbon ends leads to novel spin-dependent phenomena.Specifically, the total spin of the low energy many-body states is conserved during tunneling but that of the bulk and end states is not.As a consequence, in the singleelectron regime, dominated by Coulomb blockade phenomena, we find pronounced negative differential conductance features for ACNs contacted to parallel polarized leads.These features are however absent for an anti-parallel contact configuration, which in turn leads within a certain gate and bias voltage region to a negative tunneling magneto-resistance.Moreover, we analyze the changes in the transport characteristics under the influence of an external magnetic field.