Semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory for graphene multilayers

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to calculate the electrical conductivity of multilayer graphene with various stacking orders, considering impurities, and proposes methods to identify stacking configurations through transport measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical Boltzmann transport model for multilayer graphene that accounts for different stacking sequences and impurity types, aiding experimental identification.

Findings

Conductivity follows a power-law dependence on carrier density in clean samples.

Stacking order influences the conductivity behavior significantly.

Identification of layer number and stacking is feasible through transport data analysis.

Abstract

We calculate the conductivity of arbitrarily stacked multilayer graphene sheets within a relaxation time approximation, considering both short-range and long-range impurities. We theoretically investigate the feasibility of identifying the stacking order of these multilayers using transport measurements. For relatively clean samples, the conductivities of the various stacking configurations depend on the carrier density as a power-law for over two decades. This dependence arises from a low density decomposition of the multilayer band structure into a sum of chiral Hamiltonians. For dirty samples, the simple power-law relationship no longer holds. Nonetheless, identification of the number of layers and stacking sequence is still possible by careful comparison of experimental data to the results presented here.