Graphene armchair nanoribbon single-electron transistors: The peculiar influence of end states

We present a microscopic theory for interacting graphene armchair nanoribbon quantum dots. Long-range interaction processes are responsible for Coulomb blockade and spin-charge separation. Short-range ones, arising from the underlying honeycomb lattice of graphene smear the spin-charge separation and induce exchange correlations between bulk electrons —delocalized on the ribbon— and single electrons localized at the two ends. As a consequence, entangled end-bulk states where the bulk spin is no longer a conserved quantity occur. Entanglement's signature is the occurrence of negative differential conductance effects in a fully symmetric set-up due to symmetry-forbidden transitions. ©2009