Multilayer graphene nanoribbon under vertical electric field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vertical electric fields influence the electronic properties of multilayer armchair graphene nanoribbons, revealing tunable band gaps and phase transitions that could improve graphene-based transistors.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of electric-field effects on multilayer aGNRs, including band structure transformations and transition points, which were not previously characterized.

Findings

Band structure undergoes significant changes under E-field.

Band gap can be increased, decreased, or matched to bilayer graphene.

Semiconducting multilayer aGNRs transition to metallic state with E-field.

Abstract

We study the effect of vertical electric-field (E-field) on the electronic properties of the multilayer armchair graphene nanoribbon (aGNR). Under E-field, the band structure of a bilayer aGNR undergoes interesting transformations such as change in the electron velocity, sign of the electron effective mass, band gap, the position of the band gap in the momentum space. Depending on the width of the aGNR and the applied E-field, the band gap of the aGNR may either be increased or decreased. When the applied E-field is above a critical value, the band gap of the bilayer aGNR is identical to that of the bilayer graphene, independent of the width. We also show that, for semiconducting multilayer aGNR with more than two layers, the band gap decreases with increasing E-field, resulting in a semiconductor-to-metallic transition. This can be utilized to enhance the performance of a graphene based transistor devices.