Investigation and comparison of the large-signal characteristics and dynamical parameters of silicene and germanene nanoribbon interconnects

Abstract

One dimensional materials such as nanotubes and nanoribbons are studied widely in the literature for their peculiar properties. In particular, zigzag graphene and silicene nanoribbons constitute an active research area for the possibility to use them as interconnects. Recently, it is exposed that asymmetric zigzag germanene nanoribbons also show similar metallic characteristics. In this work, the electronic transport properties and dynamical parameters of zigzag silicene and germanene nanoribbons (ZZ-SiNR and ZZ-GeNR) are investigated and compared. First-principles quantum mechanical simulations using density functional theory in conjunction with non-equilibrium Green’s function formalism are utilized to extract the current-voltage behaviours and Fermi velocities of equivalent ZZ-SiNR and ZZ-GeNR samples. The results show that ZZ-SiNR and ZZ-GeNR samples show similar current-voltage characteristics with the ZZ-GeNR having slightly higher conductance. Then, dynamical parameters namely kinetic inductance and quantum capacitance values are obtained. The obtained values show that the kinetic inductance and quantum capacitance of the ZZ-GeNR are lower than those of ZZ-SiNR. It is concluded that both ZZ-SiNR and ZZ-GeNR can be used as nanoscale interconnects with the ZZ-GeNR having slightly higher linearity and lower kinetic inductance and quantum capacitance compared to its SiNR counterpart.