Armchair carbon nanotube on Pt and hBN/Pt: from strong metallic contact to coherent spin transport regime

Abstract

We study spin-orbit proximity effects in an armchair (4,4) carbon nanotube on the Pt(111) surface. By employing first-principles calculations, we show that the Dirac cone of the metallic nanotube is altered due to strong hybridization with the Pt substrate. Inserting a monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) between the nanotube and the substrate limits the hybridization effects leading to recovering the Dirac cone. The Dirac bands display asymmetric spin splitting, 0.7\,meV for the right movers and 1.7\,meV for the left movers at the K valley, due to the proximity to the Pt substrate. We find that the Dirac states exhibit almost perfect spin polarization, transverse to the nanotube axis and to the stacking direction, forming a proper condition for charge-to-spin conversion with coherent spin transport in the nanotube. We propose an effective Hamiltonian describing the proximity-induced effects on the Dirac electrons and their spin texture.