Electron-hole asymmetry in two-terminal graphene devices

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical model explaining electron-hole asymmetry and conductance noise in two-terminal graphene devices, emphasizing the influence of metal contacts and electrostatic potentials.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent model analyzing contact effects and electrostatic potentials in graphene, explaining experimental asymmetries and oscillations.

Findings

Contact-induced potentials decay with a power-law exponent from -1 to -0.5.

The model explains observed electron-hole asymmetry in conductance.

Fabri-Perot oscillations are accounted for at positive doping.

Abstract

A theoretical model is proposed to describe asymmetric gate-voltage dependence of conductance and noise in two-terminal ballistic graphene devices. The model is analyzed independently within the self-consistent Hartree and Thomas-Fermi approximations. Our results justify the prominent role of metal contacts in recent experiments with suspended graphene flakes. The contact-induced electrostatic potentials in graphene demonstrate a power-law decay with the exponent varying from -1 to -0.5. Within our model we explain electron-hole asymmetry and strong Fabri-Perot oscillations of the conductance and noise at positive doping, which were observed in many experiments with submicrometer samples. Limitations of the Thomas-Fermi approximation in a vicinity of the Dirac point are discussed.