The linear conductance spectrum of a metallic graphene junction formed by interconnecting two gapless graphene nanoribbons is calculated. A strong conductance suppression appears in the vicinity of the Dirac point. We found that such a conductance suppression arises from the antiresonance effect associated with the edge state localized at the zigzag-edged shoulder of the junction. The conductance valley due to the antiresonance is rather robust in the presence of the impurity and vacancy scattering. And the center of the conductance valley can be readily tuned by an electric field exerted on the wider nanoribbon.
We report a bi-polar multiple periodic negative differential conductance (NDC) effect on a single cage-shaped Ru nanoparticle measured using scanning tunneling spectroscopy. This phenomenon is assigned to the unique multiply-connected cage architecture providing two (or more) defined routes for charge flow through the cage. This, in turn, promotes a self- gating effect, where electron charging of one route affects charge transport along a neighboring channel, yielding a series of periodic NDC peaks. This picture is established and analyzed here by a theoretical model.
We study the magnetic properties of nanometer-sized graphene structures with triangular and hexagonal shapes terminated by zig-zag edges. We discuss how the shape of the island, the imbalance in the number of atoms belonging to the two graphene sublattices, the existence of zero-energy states, and the total and local magnetic moment are intimately related. We consider electronic interactions both in a mean-field approximation of the one-orbital Hubbard model and with density functional calculations. Both descriptions yield values for the ground state total spin, $S$, consistent with Liebs theorem for bipartite lattices. Triangles have a finite $S$ for all sizes whereas hexagons have S=0 and develop local moments above a critical size of $approx 1.5$ nm.
We study the effect of two metallic slabs on the collective dynamics of electrons in graphene positioned between the two slabs. We show that if the slabs are perfect conductors the plasmons of graphene display a linear dispersion relation. The velocity of these acoustic plasmons crucially depends on the distance between the two metal gates and the graphene sheet. In the case of generic slabs, the dispersion relation of graphene plasmons is much more complicated but we find that acoustic plasmons can still be obtained under specific conditions.
We investigate quantum transport via surface states in a nanostep junction on the surface of a 3D topological insulator that involves two different side surfaces. We calculate the conductance across the junction within the scattering matrix formalism and find that as the bias voltage is increased, the conductance of the nanostep junction is suppressed by a universal factor of 1/3 compared to the conductance of a similar planar junction based on a single surface of a topological insulator. We also calculate and analyze the Fano factor of the nanostep junction and predict that the Fano factor saturates at 1/5, five times smaller than for a Poisson process.
We report the experimental observation of conductance quantization in graphene nanoribbons, where 1D transport subbands are formed due to the lateral quantum confinement. We show that this quantization in graphene nanoribbons can be observed at temperatures as high as 80 K and channel lengths as long as 1.7 $mu$m. The observed quantization is in agreement with that predicted by theoretical calculations.