Energy minibands degeneration induced by magnetic field effects in graphene superlattices

Abstract

Energy minibands are a basic feature of practically any superlattice. In this regard graphene superlattices are not the exception and recently miniband transport has been reported through magneto-transport measurements. In this work, we compute the energy miniband and transport characteristics for graphene superlattices in which the energy barriers are generated by magnetic and electric fields. The transfer matrix approach and the Landauer-Büttiker formalism have been implemented to calculate the energy minibands and the linear-regime conductance. We find that energy minibands are very sensitive to the magnetic field and become degenerate by rising it. We were also able to correlate the evolution of the energy minibands as a function of the magnetic field with the transport characteristics, finding that miniband transport can be destroyed by magnetic field effects. Here, it is important to remark that although magnetic field effects have been a key element to unveil miniband transport, they can also destroy it.