Spin and Charge Current in a Short Semiconducting Chain of Paramagnetic Ionic Blocks

Abstract

We deal with the electric current flowing through a short chain of paramagnetic ionic blocks, coupled to metallic electrodes in the serial configuration. An original three-band Hubbard-Anderson Hamiltonian is diagonalised at the level of the single ionic block. A minimal but sufficient set of the latter's four hybridised eigenstates serves as a basis for the determination of the time-ordered temperature-dependent matrix Green functions, in terms of which all the current-voltage (I-V ) characteristics can be expressed provided the coupling to the electrodes is weak. The separation of the opposite-spin contributions to the electric current and, consequently, the spin current from the left to right electrode can result from the on-site Coulomb repulsion term of Hubbard-Anderson Hamiltonian, with no spin polarisation at the electrodes, but with the Zeeman-like coupling of the centre to either a molecular or an external magnetic field.