Electronic Highways in Bilayer Graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that bilayer graphene with spatially varying interlayer potential hosts topologically protected one-dimensional states, enabling extremely long electron mean free paths and potential for low power nanoscale electronic devices.

Contribution

It numerically shows that electron collisions are suppressed along zero-line trajectories in bilayer graphene, leading to very long mean free paths in clean samples.

Findings

Mean free paths of hundreds of microns are achievable.

Collisions between electrons are strongly suppressed.

Transport paths can be controlled by gate-induced potential landscapes.

Abstract

Bilayer graphene with an interlayer potential difference has an energy gap and, when the potential difference varies spatially, topologically protected one-dimensional states localized along the difference's zero-lines. When disorder is absent, electronic travel directions along zero-line trajectories are fixed by valley Hall properties. Using the Landauer-B\"uttiker formula and the non-equilibrium Green's function technique we demonstrate numerically that collisions between electrons traveling in opposite directions, due to either disorder or changes in path direction, are strongly suppressed. We find that extremely long mean free paths of the order of hundreds of microns can be expected in relatively clean samples. This finding suggests the possibility of designing low power nanoscale electronic devices in which transport paths are controlled by gates which alter the inter-layer potential landscape.