Magnetic field induced metal-insulator transition in a kagome nanoribbon

In the present work, we investigate two-terminal electron transport through a finite width kagome lattice nanoribbon in presence of a perpendicular magnetic field. We employ a simple tight-binding (T-B) Hamiltonian to describe the system and obtain the transmission properties by using Green's function technique within the framework of Landauer-Buttiker formalism. After presenting an analytical description of energy dispersion relation of a kagome nanoribbon in presence of the magnetic field, we investigate numerically the transmittance spectra together with the density of states and current-voltage characteristics. It is shown that for a specific value of the Fermi energy, the kagome network can exhibit a magnetic field induced metal-insulator transition, which is the central investigation of this communication. Our analysis may be inspiring in designing low-dimensional switching devices. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3658253]