The electronic structure of single-walled chiral GaN (8, n2) nanotubes, where n2 = 1–7, was studied by the nonempirical relativistic augmented cylindrical wave method. It was established that all systems are semiconductors with a band gap of 1–2 eV. The spin–orbit splitting amounts to 3–13 meV for the valence band top and 1–10 meV for the conduction band bottom. The highest spin selectivity efficiency is observed for (8, 1) and (8, 2) nanotubes in which the predominant α-transport and high spin–orbit splitting (>10 meV) generate the optimal conditions for spin filters.
Merinov et al. (Sat,) studied this question.