Effect of uniaxial strain on the tunnel magnetoresistance of T-shaped graphene nanoribbon based spin-valve

•Spin-dependent transport through a T-shaped graphene nanoribbon is investigated.•Effect of uniaxial strain is considered.•Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) can be increased by tuning the uniaxial strain.•TMR of the system can be nicely controlled by graphene width.

We theoretically investigated the spin-dependent transport through a T-shaped graphene nanoribbon (TsGNR) based spin-valve consisting of armchair graphene sandwiched between two semi-infinite ferromagnetic armchair graphene nanoribbon leads in the presence of an applied uniaxial strain. Based on a tight-binding model and standard nonequilibrium Green’s function technique, it is demonstrated that the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) for the system can be increased about 98% by tuning the uniaxial strain. Our results show that the absolute values of TMR around the zero bias voltage for compressive strain are larger than tensile strain. In addition, the TMR of the system can be nicely controlled by GNR width.