Narrow Results

We have recently reported on the synthesis and characterization of a new form of nanostructured graphene that we call "nanoperforated graphene". Nanoperforated graphene is fabricated by etching a periodic array of nanoscale holes into atomic membranes of graphene to create an ultrathin superlattice-like structure. Nanoperforated graphene demonstrates semiconductor-like behavior and we have realized room-temperature field-induced conductance modulation as high as 450 (compared with < 10 for unpatterned graphene) with field-effect mobilities of ~ 1 cm²V^-1s^-1. Here, we discuss the conduction mechanisms in nanoperforated graphene and the relevance of this new material for field-effect transistor devices. In nanoperforated graphene with 15 nm nanoconstrictions, we observe that the low-bias mobility is independent of temperature, consistent with elastic scattering-limited conduction. At low temperatures, a transport gap limits conduction in the sub-threshold regime and affects the threshold voltage for band conduction. We show that the high-bias electrical characteristics of nanoperforated graphene are similar to "artificial solids," a class of materials made of 2D arrays of Coulomb islands, consistent with observed Coulomb Blockade features in the sub-threshold regime. Currently, the device characteristics of the nanopatterned graphene material are found to be suitable for large-area, thin-film transistor applications. Future higher-performance applications are expected.

Graphene plasmons have advantages over noble metal plasmons such as high tunability and low loss. However, for graphene nanostructures smaller than 10 nm, little is known about their plasmons or whether regular plasmonic behavior exists, despite their potential applications. Here, we present first-principles calculations of plasmon excitations in zigzag graphene nanoribbon segments. Very regular plasmonic behavior is found: Only one plasmon mode exists in the low-energy regime ($<1.5$ eV). The classical electrostatic scaling law still approximately holds when the width ($W$) is larger than $\sim 1.5$ nm but totally fails when $W<1.5$ nm due to quantum effects. The scaling with different doping densities shows that the plasmon is nearly free-electron plasmon instead of Dirac plasmon.

We present here a brief review on the remarkable consequences of the flat bands formed at the edges of the Zigzag graphene nanoribbon (ZGNR). The inclusion of the on-site Coulomb interaction is shown to induce the edge spin ferromagnetism, whose spin stiffness demonstrates a nonmonotonic dependence on the lateral electric field. The critical electric field strength corresponds to that of the insulator to half-metal transition. The inclusion of the spin–orbit coupling (SOC) has been believed to generate the quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) guiding into the interesting new field of topological insulator. By carefully investigating the SOC near the edge, we have shown that the additional σ-edge band gives a marginal perturbation and hence the existence of the QSHE depends on the coupling strength between the π-edge bands and the σ-edge band. We demonstrate that for the charge neutral ZGNR, the QSHE does not occur in the pristine ZGNR, while the hydrogen passivation along the edge may recover the expected feature of the QSHE.

In this work, the energy transport of phonon and electron in graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are investigated by the nonequilibrium Green's function method without considering the interaction of phonon and electron. The heat current of phonon contribution comes from the gradient of temperature. While for the electron contribution, it stems from the gradient of both temperature and electrochemical potential. The corresponding intermediate functions satisfy the Onsager relationship. Thermal conductances are calculated in GNR and compared to those in square lattice ribbon model respectively. It is found that both the phonon and electron thermal conductances in square lattice ribbon are smaller than those in GNRs at low temperature and surpass those in armchair and zigzag GNRs respectively, as the temperature increases. Meanwhile, the heat transport is related to the edges of GNRs. These phenomena depend on their dispersion relations and energy band structures.

The influence of periodic edge vacancies and antidot arrays on the thermoelectric properties of zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs) are investigated. Using Green’s function method, the tight-binding approximation for the electron Hamiltonian and the 4th nearest neighbor approximation for the phonon dynamical matrix, we calculate the Seebeck coefficient and the thermoelectric figure of merit. It is found that, at a certain periodic arrangement of vacancies on both edges of zigzag nanoribbon, a finite band gap opens and almost twofold degenerate energy levels appear. As a result, a marked increase in the Seebeck coefficient takes place. It is shown that an additional enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit can be achieved by a combination of periodic edge defects with an antidot array.

The carrier mobility in low-field specifically in parabolic energy region of one-dimensional graphene nanoribbon (GNR) band energy is presented in this work. Low-field mobility model describe the carrier transport and its dependency factors when dealing with degenerate and non-degenerate principals. The result shows that the low-field mobility strongly depends on the temperature in the non-degenerate regime in which it sharply decreases with increasing temperature in the range of 10–250 K but the mobility is less affected by the temperature above 250 K. The effect of varying the GNR width to the mobility is also demonstrated in this work. In addition, it is also shown that the mobility depends on the carrier concentration in degenerate domain in which it increases at higher carrier concentrations.

In this letter, we investigate the transport properties of one-dimensional semiconducting Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with parabolic band structure near the Dirac point. The analytical model of effective mobility is developed by using the conductance approach, which differs from the conventional method of extracting the effective mobility using the well-known Matthiessen rule. Graphene nanoribbons conductance model developed was applied in the Drude model to obtain the effective mobility, which then gives nearly close comparison with the experimental data.

By adopting density functional theory in combination with nonequilibrium Green's functions, we investigated the electronic structure and transport properties of silicon/nitrogen (Si/N) co-doping armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) with SiN_x co-dopant incorporated in neighboring carbon atoms. The results demonstrate that the electronic structure can be modulated by introducing SiN_x co-dopants in AGNRs. The striking negative differential resistance behaviors in the range of low bias can be observed in Si/N co-doped AGNR devices. These remarkable properties suggest the potential application of Si/N co-doping AGNRs in molectronics.

We investigate the spin-polarized electronic transport properties of the closed hexagon graphene nanoribbon devices with different hydrogen hybrid of edge carbon atoms by using non-equilibrium Green’s functions in combination with the density functional theory. The results show that an excellent molecular switching with on/off ratio over 10⁶, perfect spin-filtering effect and negative differential resistance effect have been observed. A detailed analysis has been presented.

In this paper, we investigate the influence of a gate electric field on the tunneling current for the contact of impurity graphene nanoribbon with a metal or quantum dots. Based on the Hamiltonian for graphene in the tight-binding approximation, the density of states is calculated, which allows us to obtain a tunneling current. We analyze the effect of the field magnitude on the detecting possibility of an impurity in the graphene nanoribbon. A sufficient change of current–voltage characteristic (CVC) of the contact is observed, with an increase in the constant electric field applied parallel to the nanoribbon plane.

Using a non-equilibrium Green’s function framework in combination with the complex energy-band method, an atomistic full-quantum model for solving quantum transport problems for a zigzag-edge graphene nanoribbon (zGNR) structure is proposed. For transport calculations, the mathematical expressions from the theory for zGNR-based device structures are derived in detail. The transport properties of zGNR-based devices are calculated and studied in detail using the proposed method.

Ballistic thermal transport properties in graphene nanoribbon modulated with strain are investigated by non-equilibrium Green’s function approach. The results show that the strain can suppress the phonon transport of flexural phonon mode (FPM) and enhance the phonon transport of in-plane mode (IPM) in low-frequency region, leading to the reduction in the thermal conductance of FPM and the enhancement in the thermal conductance of IPM. The total thermal conductance is decreased by strain as the reduction in the thermal conductance of FPM overcomes the enhancement in the thermal conductance of IPM.

Graphene has excellent mechanical properties and vibration frequency is an important mechanical property. In this paper, the effects of doping elements and doping concentrations on the vibration characteristics of graphene nanoribbons were investigated by molecular dynamics simulation. The vibration characteristics are influenced by the doping element, depending on the bond structural difference in bond structure between doping atoms and carbon atoms. The vibration frequencies of Nitrogen (N)-doped and Nitrogen–Nitrogen (N–N)-doped graphene nanoribbons are slightly lower than those of pure graphene nanoribbons. However, the vibration frequencies of Sulfur (S)/Phosphorus (P)-doped and Sulfur–Sulfur (S–S)/Phosphorus–Phosphorus (P–P)-doped graphene nanoribbons are significantly lower than those of pure graphene nanoribbons. In addition, with the increase of S (P) doping concentration, the vibration frequency of monolayer graphene nanoribbons decreases gradually.

By using the first-principles density functional theory combining with the nonequilibrium Green’s function techniques, we investigate the electronic structure and the spin-polarization-dependent electronic transport of zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNR) with a defect of vacancy. The total energy of the graphene ribbons corresponding to different vacancy locations is calculated to analyze the stability of the structures. It is found that the existence of a vacancy causes a significant change in the electronic band gap. The electronic band and the transport become spin-polarization-dependent. The calculated I–V characteristic shows that the spin-polarization-dependent effect can be enhanced under a finite bias voltage.

The electron transport parameters such as electron energy relaxation rate and phonon limited electron resistivity for iron (transition metal) doped 2D nanoribbons of armchair graphene nanoribbon (aGNR) and h-boron nitride nanoribbon (h-BNNR) have been calculated via hot electron acoustical phonon interactions on the basis of acoustical deformation potential (ADP) coupling mechanism. We have performed the investigation for the lower concentration ($x=1$%) of iron doping under the influence of externally applied magnetic field at low temperature to room temperature regime. The hot electron acoustical phonon relaxation rates are observed with electric field and under constant applied magnetic field. The doping of iron increases the electron energy relaxation rate with respect to their pristine counter parts. Moreover, the pristine h-BNNR exhibits less electron energy relaxation rate with respect to pristine aGNR. Upon applying magnetic field on Fe doped armchair GNR as well as Fe-doped h-BNNR the electron energy relaxation rate reduces down to a considerable extent with respect to their pristine counterparts. Moreover, under the impact of magnetic field, the acoustical phonon restricted electrical resistivity of Fe-doped GNR is considerably low compared to pristine GNR.

Based on the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method combined with the density functional theory (DFT), we have studied the gate-modulated electronic properties of a graphene nanoribbon (GNR) which is composed of two GNRs of different widths. The results show that the charge transport is greatly modulated by the applied gate. Negative differential resistance (NDR) behaviors is found in such a system. With the increase in the gate, the NDR behaviors will disappear and reappear. Furthermore, under certain gate voltages multiple NDR behavior is found, the origin of which is attributed to the change of the number of effective transport channels and the variation of delocalization degree of the orbitals within the bias window. Interestingly, low bias NDR behavior is obtained which is desirable for integrated circuits from the point view of power consumption.

We use first-principles method to investigate the electronic, magnetic, and mechanical properties of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with extended line defect. Particular attention has been placed on zigzag GNR with 5-8-5 line defect and armchair GNR with 4-8 line defect. The results show that the band gaps of GNRs can be effectively tuned by line defect, which depend on both their widths and the position of defect. The line-defect embedded GNRs are either metals or semiconductor with markedly reduced band gap. The band-gap reduction is attributed to the defect-induced impurity states. In particular, the metallic line-defect embedded zigzag GNRs are ferromagnetic at ground state, while those semiconducting ones are antiferromagnetic. Upon the line-defect embedded armchair GNRs, the band gaps vary periodically with the increasing widths. Our results imply the potential applications of line-defect embedded GNRs at nanoscale electronics.

We report our recent numerical study on the effects of dephasing on a perfectly conducting channel (PCC), its presence believed to be dominant in the transport characteristics of a zigzag graphene nanoribbons (GNR) and of a metallic carbon nanotubes (CNT). Our data confirms an earlier prediction that a PCC in GNR exhibits a peculiar robustness against dephasing, in contrast to that of the CNT. By studying the behavior of the conductance as a function of the system's length we show that dephasing destroys the PCC in CNT, whereas it stabilizes the PCC in GNR. Such opposing responses of the PCC against dephasing stem from a different nature of the PCC in these systems.

This work presents a comprehensive investigation of the quantum capacitance and the associated effects on the carrier transit delay in armchair-edge graphene nanoribbons (A-GNRs) based on semi-analytical method. We emphasize on the realistic analysis of bandgap with taking edge effects into account by means of modified tight binding (TB) model. The results show that the edge effects have significant influence in defining the bandgap which is a necessary input in the accurate analyses of capacitance. The quantum capacitance is discussed in both nondegenerate (low gate voltage) and degenerate (high gate voltage) regimes. We observe that the classical capacitance limits the total gate (external) capacitance in the degenerate regime, whereas, quantum capacitance limits the external gate capacitance in the nondegenerate regime. The influence of gate capacitances on the gate delay is studied extensively to demonstrate the optimization of switching time. Moreover, the high-field behavior of a GNR is studied in the degenerate and nondegenerate regimes. We find that a smaller intrinsic capacitance appears in the channel due to high velocity carrier, which limits the quantum capacitance and thus limit the gate delay. Such detail analysis of GNRs considering a realistic model would be useful for the optimized design of GNR-based nanoelectronic devices.

We report our recent numerical study on the effects of dephasing on a perfectly conducting channel (PCC), its presence believed to be dominant in the transport characteristics of a zigzag graphene nanoribbons (GNR) and of a metallic carbon nanotubes (CNT). Our data confirms an earlier prediction that a PCC in GNR exhibits a peculiar robustness against dephasing, in contrast to that of the CNT. By studying the behavior of the conductance as a function of the system's length we show that dephasing destroys the PCC in CNT, whereas it stabilizes the PCC in GNR. Such opposing responses of the PCC against dephasing stem from a different nature of the PCC in these systems.