We report on the transport properties of novel carbon nanostructures made of partially unzipped carbon nanotubes, which can be regarded as a seamless junction of a tube and a nanoribbon. We find that graphene nanoribbons act at certain energy ranges as a perfect valley filters for carbon nanotubes, with the maximum possible conductance. Our results show that a partially unzipped carbon nanotube is a magnetoresistive device, with a very large value of the magnetoresistance. We explore the properties of several structures combining nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons, demonstrating that they behave as optimal contacts for each other, and opening a new route for the design of mixed graphene/nanotube devices.
@article{arxiv.0904.3676,
title = {Carbon nanoelectronics: unzipping tubes into graphene ribbons},
author = {H. Santos and L. Chico and L. Brey},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.3676},
year = {2015}
}