We fabricate a graphene p-n-p heterojunction and exploit the coherence of weakly-confined Dirac quasiparticles to resolve the underlying scattering potential using low temperature scanning gate microscopy. The tip-induced perturbation to the heterojunction modifies the condition for resonant scattering, enabling us to detect localized Fabry-Perot cavities from the focal point of halos in scanning gate images. In addition to halos over the bulk we also observe ones spatially registered to the physical edge of the graphene. Guided by quantum transport simulations we attribute these to modified resonant scattering at the edges within elongated cavities that form due to focusing of the electrostatic field.
The quantum transport formalism based on tight-binding models is known to be powerful in dealing with a wide range of open physical systems subject to external driving forces but is, at the same time, limited by the memory requirements increasing with the number of atomic sites in the scattering region. Here we demonstrate how to achieve an accurate simulation of quantum transport feasible for experimentally sized bulk graphene heterojunctions at a strongly reduced computational cost. Without free tuning parameters, we show excellent agreement with a recent experiment on Klein backscattering [A. F. Young and P. Kim, Nature Phys. 5, 222 (2009)].
We calculate quantum transport for metal-graphene nanoribbon heterojunctions within the atomistic self-consistent Schrodinger/Poisson scheme. Attention is paid on both the chemical aspects of the interface bonding as well the one-dimensional electrostatics along the ribbon length. Band-bending and doping effects strongly influence the transport properties, giving rise to conductance asymmetries and a selective suppression of the subband formation. Junction electrostatics and p-type characteristics drive the conduction mechanism in the case of high work function Au, Pd and Pt electrodes, while contact resistance becomes dominant in the case of Al.
The success of all-graphene electronics is severely hindered by the challenging realization and subsequent integration of semiconducting channels and metallic contacts. Here, we comprehensively investigate the electronic transport across width-modulated heterojunctions consisting of a graphene quantum dot of varying lengths and widths embedded in a pair of armchair-edged metallic nanoribbons, of the kind recently fabricated via on-surface synthesis. We show that the presence of the quantum dot enables the opening of a width-dependent transport gap, thereby yielding built-in one-dimensional metal-semiconductor-metal junctions. Furthermore, we find that, in the vicinity of the band edges, the conductance is subject to a smooth transition from an antiresonant to a resonant transport regime upon increasing the channel length. These results are rationalized in terms of a competition between quantum-confinement effects and quantum dot-to-lead coupling. Overall, our work establishes graphene quantum dot nanoarchitectures as appealing platforms to seamlessly integrate gap-tunable semiconducting channels and metallic contacts into an individual nanoribbon, hence realizing self-contained carbon-based electronic devices.
Ohms law describes the proportionality of current density and electric field. In solid-state conductors, Ohms law emerges due to electron scattering processes that relax the electrical current. Here, we use nitrogen-vacancy center magnetometry to directly image the local breakdown of Ohms law in a narrow constriction fabricated in a high mobility graphene monolayer. Ohmic flow is visible at room temperature as current concentration on the constriction edges, with flow profiles entirely determined by sample geometry. However, as the temperature is lowered below 200 K, the current concentrates near the constriction center. The change in the flow pattern is consistent with a crossover from diffusive to viscous electron transport dominated by electron-electron scattering processes that do not relax current.
We discuss control of the quantum-transport properties of a mesoscopic device by connecting it in a coherent feedback loop with a quantum-mechanical controller. We work in a scattering approach and derive results for the combined scattering matrix of the device-controller system and determine the conditions under which the controller can exert ideal control on the output characteristics. As concrete example we consider the use of feedback to optimise the conductance of a chaotic quantum dot and investigate effects of controller dimension and decoherence. In both respects we find that the performance of the feedback geometry is well in excess of that offered by a simple series configuration.