Electron transport channels and their manipulation by impurity in armchair-edge graphene nanoribbons
Under the scheme of the nonequilibrium Green’s function combined with the tight-binding approximation, we study electron transport properties in different atomic chains of an armchair-edged graphene nanoribbon (AGNR) and their manipulation using a single substitutional impurity atom. By calculation...
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Published in | Carbon (New York) Vol. 72; pp. 365 - 371 |
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Main Authors | , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Kidlington
Elsevier Ltd
01.06.2014
Elsevier |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Under the scheme of the nonequilibrium Green’s function combined with the tight-binding approximation, we study electron transport properties in different atomic chains of an armchair-edged graphene nanoribbon (AGNR) and their manipulation using a single substitutional impurity atom. By calculation and analysis of the local bond currents between nearest atom sites in the AGNR, we find that electron transport along two armchair-edged chains is more active than that along other chains for any clean AGNR. For a metallic AGNR, interestingly, there exists a series of parallel distributed major channels for the low-energy electron transport. Further, the transport properties of these channels can be manipulated by a single substitutional impurity atom with different strength and locating position, e.g., a suitable impurity can cause a selected channel to be closed completely while others still open. However, in the high-energy regime these independent channels disappear, and a metallic AGNR becomes entirely metallic in this case. The findings here suggest that an AGNR may be used as a multi-channel plane material in the future nanoelectronic technology. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0008-6223 1873-3891 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.carbon.2014.02.024 |