Electron orbital valves made of multiply connected armchair carbon nanotubes with mirror-reflection symmetry: tight-binding study

Abstract

Using the tight-binding method and the Landauer-Büttiker conductance formalism, we demonstrate that a multiply connected armchair carbon nanotube with a mirror-reflection symmetry can sustain an electron current of the $π$-bonding orbital while suppress that of the $π$-antibonding orbital over a certain energy range. Accordingly, the system behaves like an electron orbital valve and may be used as a scanning tunneling microscope to probe pairing symmetry in d-wave superconductors or even orbital ordering in solids which is believed to occur in some transition-metal oxides.