Gate tunable spin transport in graphene with Rashba spin-orbit coupling

Recently, it attracts much attention to study spin-resolved transport properties in graphene with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC). One remarkable finding is that Klein tunneling in single layer graphene (SLG) with RSOC (SLG + R for short below) behaves as in bi-layer graphene (BLG). Based on the effective Dirac theory, we reconsider this tunneling problem and derive the analytical solution for the transmission coefficients. Our result shows that Klein tunneling in SLG + R and BLG exhibits completely different behaviors. More importantly, we find two new transmission selection rules in SLG + R, i.e., the single band to single band (S -> S) and the single band to multiple bands (S -> M) transmission regimes, which strongly depend on the relative height among Fermi level, RSOC, and potential barrier. Interestingly, in the S -> S transmission regime, only normally incident electrons have capacity to pass through the barrier, while in the S -> M transmission regime the angle-dependent tunneling becomes very prominent. Using the transmission coefficients, we also derive spin-resolved conductance analytically, and conductance oscillation with the increasing barrier height and zero conductance gap are found in SLG + R. The present study offers new insights and opportunities for developing graphene-based spin devices. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.