Effect of zigzag and armchair edges on the electronic transport in single-layer and bilayer graphene nanoribbons with defects

Abstract

We study electronic transport in monolayer and bilayer graphene with single and many short-range defects focusing on the role of edge termination (zigzag versus armchair). Within the tight-binding approximation, we derive analytical expressions for the transmission amplitude in monolayer graphene nanoribbons with a single short-range defect. The analytical calculations are complemented by exact numerical transport calculations for monolayer and bilayer graphene nanoribbons with a single and many short-range defects and edge disorder. We find that for the case of the zigzag edge termination, both monolayer and bilayer nanoribbons in a single- and few-mode regime remain practically insensitive to defects situated close to the edges. In contrast, the transmission of both armchair monolayer and bilayer nanoribbons is strongly affected by even a small edge defect concentration. This behavior is related to the effective boundary condition at the edges, which, respectively, does not and does couple valleys for zigzag and armchair nanoribbons. In the many-mode regime and for sufficiently high defect concentration, the difference of the transmission between armchair and zigzag nanoribbons diminishes. We also study resonant features (Fano resonances) in monolayer and bilayer nanoribbons in a single-mode regime with a short-range defect. We discuss in detail how an interplay between the defect's position at different sublattices in the ribbons, the defect's distance to the edge, and the structure of the extended states in ribbons with different edge termination influence the width and the energy of Fano resonances.