Quantum conductance of graphene nanoribbons with edge defects
- Resource Type
- Working Paper
- Authors
- Li, T. C.; Lu, Shao-Ping
- Source
- Phys. Rev. B 77, 085408 (2008)
- Subject
- Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Condensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
- Language
The conductance of metallic graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with single defects and weak disorder at their edges is investigated in a tight-binding model. We find that a single edge defect will induce quasi-localized states and consequently cause zero-conductance dips. The center energies and breadths of such dips are strongly dependent on the geometry of GNRs. Armchair GNRs are much more sensitive to a vacancy than zigzag GNRs, but are less sensitive to a weak scatter. More importantly, we find that with a weak disorder, zigzag GNRs will change from metallic to semiconducting due to Anderson localization. But a weak disorder only slightly affects the conductance of armchair GNRs. The influence of edge defects on the conductance will decrease when the widths of GNRs increase.
Comment: 8 pages and 11 figures