Electronic transport on graphene armchair-edge nanoribbons with Fermi velocity and potential barriers

Abstract

The transport properties of Dirac fermions through armchair-edge graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) with a single and double rectangular Fermi velocity vF and electrostatic potential U barriers is investigated. We employ a transfer matrix method (TMM) to compute the transmission coefficient of the full set of propagating mode which is used to obtain the conductance and Fano factor spectra for both metallic and semiconducting nanoribbons. We show that a reduced Fermi velocity within the barrier region can partially suppress the backscattering resulting from the electrostatic potential. In a double barrier structure, the emergence of high-order transmitting modes is shown to substantially reduce the Fano factor in the spectral region around U. These results indicate that the simultaneous tuning of vF and U in barrier regions can be explored to control the electronic transport in graphene-based nanoelectronics structures.