Conductance of Graphene Nanoribbon Junctions and the Tight Binding Model

Planar carbon-based electronic devices, including metal/semiconductor junctions, transistors and interconnects, can now be formed from patterned sheets of graphene. Most simulations of charge transport within graphene-based electronic devices assume an energy band structure based on a nearest-neighbour tight binding analysis. In this paper, the energy band structure and conductance of graphene nanoribbons and metal/semiconductor junctions are obtained using a third nearest-neighbour tight binding analysis in conjunction with an efficient nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. We find significant differences in both the energy band structure and conductance obtained with the two approximations.

[1]  F. Guinea,et al.  The electronic properties of graphene , 2007, Reviews of Modern Physics.

[2]  D. Herbert,et al.  Modeling charge transport in graphene nanoribbons and carbon nanotubes using a Schrödinger-Poisson solver , 2009 .

[3]  S. Roche,et al.  Charge transport in disordered graphene-based low dimensional materials , 2008, 0809.4630.

[4]  R. Kundu.  Tight binding parameters for graphene , 2009, 0907.4264.

[5]  Mark S. Lundstrom,et al.  Ballistic graphene nanoribbon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors: A full real-space quantum transport simulation , 2007 .

[6]  Shao-ping Lu,et al.  Quantum conductance of graphene nanoribbons with edge defects , 2006, cond-mat/0609009.

[7]  Atomistic non-equilibrium Green’s function simulations of Graphene nano-ribbons in the quantum hall regime , 2008, 0801.1159.

[8]  S. Datta.  Quantum Transport: Atom to Transistor , 2004 .

[9]  Fujita,et al.  Edge state in graphene ribbons: Nanometer size effect and edge shape dependence. , 1996, Physical review. B, Condensed matter.

[10]  Jing Guo,et al.  Modeling edge effects in graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistors with real and mode space methods , 2009, 0902.4621.

[11]  M. Sancho,et al.  Quick iterative scheme for the calculation of transfer matrices: application to Mo (100) , 1984 .

[12]  A. Geim,et al.  Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene , 2005, Nature.

[13]  T. Ebbesen.  Physical Properties of Carbon Nanotubes , 1997 .

[14]  Jing Guo,et al.  Metal-semiconductor junction of graphene nanoribbons , 2008 .

[15]  J. Maultzsch,et al.  Tight-binding description of graphene , 2002 .

[16]  C. Hwang,et al.  Low-energy electronic states of carbon nanocones in an electric field , 2010 .