No Arabic abstract
We propose use of disorder to produce a field effect transistor (FET) in biased bilayer and trilayer graphene. Modulation of the bias voltage can produce large variations in the conductance when the disorders effects are confined to only one of the graphene layers. This effect is based on the bias voltages ability to select which of the graphene layers carries current, and is not tied to the presence of a gap in the density of states. In particular, we demonstrate this effect in models of gapless ABA-stacked trilayer graphene, gapped ABC-stacked trilayer graphene, and gapped bilayer graphene.
We present an analytical device model for a graphene bilayer field-effect transistor (GBL-FET) with a graphene bilayer as a channel, and with back and top gates. The model accounts for the dependences of the electron and hole Fermi energies as well as energy gap in different sections of the channel on the bias back-gate and top-gate voltages. Using this model, we calculate the dc and ac source-drain currents and the transconductance of GBL-FETs with both ballistic and collision dominated electron transport as functions of structural parameters, the bias back-gate and top-gate voltages, and the signal frequency. It is shown that there are two threshold voltages, $V_{th,1}$ and $V_{th,2}$, so that the dc current versus the top-gate voltage relation markedly changes depending on whether the section of the channel beneath the top gate (gated section) is filled with electrons, depleted, or filled with holes. The electron scattering leads to a decrease in the dc and ac currents and transconductances, whereas it weakly affects the threshold frequency. As demonstrated, the transient recharging of the gated section by holes can pronouncedly influence the ac transconductance resulting in its nonmonotonic frequency dependence with a maximum at fairly high frequencies.
A theoretical study of the magnetoelectronic properties of zigzag and armchair bilayer graphene nanoribbons (BGNs) is presented. Using the recursive Greens function method, we study the band structure of BGNs in uniform perpendicular magnetic fields and discuss the zero-temperature conductance for the corresponding clean systems. The conductance quantized as 2(n+1)G_ for the zigzag edges and nG_0 for the armchair edges with G_{0}=2e^2/h being the conductance unit and $n$ an integer. Special attention is paid to the effects of edge disorder. As in the case of monolayer graphene nanoribbons (GNR), a small degree of edge disorder is already sufficient to induce a transport gap around the neutrality point. We further perform comparative studies of the transport gap E_g and the localization length in bilayer and monolayer nanoribbons. While for the GNRs E_{g}^{GNR}is proportional to 1/W, the corresponding transport gap E_{g}^{BGN} for the bilayer ribbons shows a more rapid decrease as the ribbon width W is increased. We also demonstrate that the evolution of localization lengths with the Fermi energy shows two distinct regimes. Inside the transport gap, xi is essentially independent on energy and the states in the BGNs are significantly less localized than those in the corresponding GNRs. Outside the transport gap xi grows rapidly as the Fermi energy increases and becomes very similar for BGNs and GNRs.
We investigate the electronic transport properties of unbiased and biased bilayer graphene nanoribbon in n-p and n-n junctions subject to a perpendicular magnetic field. Using the non-equilibrium Greens function method and the Landauer-B{u}ttiker formalism, the conductance is studied for the cases of clean, on-site, and edge disordered bilayer graphene. We show that the lowest Hall plateau remains unchanged in the presence of disorder, whereas asymmetry destroys both the plateaus and conductance quantization. In addition, we show that disorder induces an enhancement of the conductance in the n-p region in the presence of magnetic fields. Finally, we show that the equilibration of quantum Hall edge states between distinctively doped regions causes Hall plateaus to appear in the regime of complete mode mixing.
We calculate the conductance of a two-dimensional bilayer with inverted electron-hole bands, to study the sensitivity of the quantum spin Hall insulator (with helical edge conduction) to the combination of electrostatic disorder and a perpendicular magnetic field. The characteristic breakdown field for helical edge conduction splits into two fields with increasing disorder, a field $B_{c}$ for the transition into a quantum Hall insulator (supporting chiral edge conduction) and a smaller field $B_{c}$ for the transition to bulk conduction in a quasi-metallic regime. The spatial separation of the inverted bands, typical for broken-gap InAs/GaSb quantum wells, is essential for the magnetic-field induced bulk conduction --- there is no such regime in HgTe quantum wells.
When light is incident on a medium with spatially disordered index of refraction, interference effects lead to near-perfect reflection when the number of dielectric interfaces is large, so that the medium becomes a transparent mirror. We investigate the analog of this effect for electrons in twisted bilayer graphene (TBG), for which local fluctuations of the twist angle give rise to a spatially random Fermi velocity. In a description that includes only spatial variation of Fermi velocity, we derive the incident-angle-dependent localization length for the case of quasi-one-dimensional disorder by mapping this problem onto one dimensional Anderson localization. The localization length diverges at normal incidence as a consequence of Klein tunneling, leading to a power-law decay of the transmission when averaged over incidence angle. In a minimal model of TBG, the modulation of twist angle also shifts the location of the Dirac cones in momentum space in a way that can be described by a random gauge field, and thus Klein tunneling is inexact. However, when the Dirac electrons incident momentum is large compared to these shifts, the primary effect of twist disorder is only to shift the incident angle associated with perfect transmission away from zero. These results suggest a mechanism for disorder-induced collimation, valley filtration, and energy filtration of Dirac electron beams, so that TBG offers a promising new platform for Dirac fermion optics.