Strain-Induced Pseudomagnetic Field for Novel Graphene Electronics

Abstract

Particular strain geometry in graphene could lead to a uniform pseudomagnetic field of order 10T and might open up interesting applications in graphene nanoelectronics. Through quantum transport calculations of realistic strained graphene flakes of sizes of 100 nm, we examine possible means of exploiting this effect for practical electronics and valleytronics devices. First, we found that elastic backscattering at rough edges leads to the formation of well-defined transport gaps of order 100 meV under moderate maximum strain of 10%. Second, the application of a real magnetic field induced a separation, in space and energy, of the states arising from different valleys, leading to a way of inducing bulk valley polarization which is insensitive to short-range scattering.