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Register a new userElectronic transport across quantum dots in graphene nanoribbons: Toward built-in gap-tunable metal-semiconductor-metal heterojunctions
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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.
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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.
A blueprint for producing scalable digital graphene electronics has remained elusive. Current methods to produce semiconducting-metallic graphene networks all suffer from either stringent lithographic demands that prevent reproducibility, process-induced disorder in the graphene, or scalability issues. Using angle resolved photoemission, we have discovered a unique one dimensional metallic-semiconducting-metallic junction made entirely from graphene, and produced without chemical functionalization or finite size patterning. The junction is produced by taking advantage of the inherent, atomically ordered, substrate-graphene interaction when it is grown on SiC, in this case when graphene is forced to grow over patterned SiC steps. This scalable bottomup approach allows us to produce a semiconducting graphene strip whose width is precisely defined within a few graphene lattice constants, a level of precision entirely outside modern lithographic limits. The architecture demonstrated in this work is so robust that variations in the average electronic band structure of thousands of these patterned ribbons have little variation over length scales tens of microns long. The semiconducting graphene has a topologically defined few nanometer wide region with an energy gap greater than 0.5 eV in an otherwise continuous metallic graphene sheet. This work demonstrates how the graphene-substrate interaction can be used as a powerful tool to scalably modify graphenes electronic structure and opens a new direction in graphene electronics research.
Results of quantum mechanical simulations of the influence of edge disorder on transport in graphene nanoribbon metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are reported. The addition of edge disorder significantly reduces ON-state currents and increases OFF-state currents, and introduces wide variability across devices. These effects decrease as ribbon widths increase and as edges become smoother. However the bandgap decreases with increasing width, thereby increasing the band-to-band tunneling mediated subthreshold leakage current even with perfect nanoribbons. These results suggest that without atomically precise edge control during fabrication, MOSFET performance gains through use of graphene will be difficult to achieve.
On-surface synthesis has recently emerged as an effective route towards the atomically precise fabrication of graphene nanoribbons of controlled topologies and widths. However, whether and to which degree structural disorder occurs in the resulting samples is a crucial issue for prospective applications that remains to be explored. Here, we experimentally identify missing benzene rings at the edges, which we name bite defects, as the most abundant type of disorder in armchair nanoribbons synthesized by the bottom-up approach. First, we address their density and spatial distribution on the basis of scanning tunnelling microscopy and find that they exhibit a strong tendency to aggregate. Next, we explore their effect on the quantum charge transport from first-principles calculations, revealing that such imperfections substantially disrupt the conduction properties at the band edges. Finally, we generalize our theoretical findings to wider nanoribbons in a systematic manner, hence establishing practical guidelines to minimize the detrimental role of such defects on the charge transport. Overall, our work portrays a detailed picture of bite defects in bottom-up armchair graphene nanoribbons and assesses their effect on the performance of carbon-based nanoelectronic devices.
Extremely long coherence times, excellent single-qubit gate fidelities and two-qubit logic have been demonstrated with silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor spin qubits, making it one of the leading platforms for quantum information processing. Despite this, a long-standing challenge in this system has been the demonstration of tunable tunnel coupling between single electrons. Here we overcome this hurdle with gate-defined quantum dots and show couplings that can be tuned on and off for quantum operations. We use charge sensing to discriminate between the (2,0) and (1,1) charge states of a double quantum dot and show excellent charge sensitivity. We demonstrate tunable coupling up to 13 GHz, obtained by fitting charge polarization lines, and tunable tunnel rates down to below 1 Hz, deduced from the random telegraph signal. The demonstration of tunable coupling between single electrons in a silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor device provides significant scope for high-fidelity two-qubit logic toward quantum information processing with standard manufacturing.
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