Graphene nanoribbon intercalated with hexagonal boron nitride: Electronic transport properties from ab initio calculations

•We study via DFT+NEGF a magnetic tunnel junction;•The MTJ is composed of a zig-zag h-BN ribbon with a zig-zag graphene ribbon;•By DFT+NEGF results we show that this system could be used as a spin filter;•We show that such system presents a magnetoresistance of 105%;•The efficiency strongly depends on the length of BNNR.

A magnetic tunnel junction consisting of a boron nitride nanoribbon contacted by two semi-infinite electrodes composed of (3,0) ferromagnetic zig-zag graphene nanoribbons was investigated. Performing spin-polarized ab initio transport calculations based on a scheme that combines non-equilibrium Green's function with density functional theory (NEGF+DFT) we predict that such system could act as spin-filter (the efficiency reaches 50%) and present a magnetoristance of 105%, depending on the length of the boron nitride region.