Substrate effects on transport properties of a biased AA-stacked bilayer graphene

TL;DR

This study explores how substrate-induced effects influence the transport properties of biased AA-stacked bilayer graphene, revealing significant changes in conductance and tunneling behavior relevant for electronic device applications.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of substrate effects on biased AA-stacked bilayer graphene's transport properties using the Dirac Hamiltonian and transfer matrix approach.

Findings

Induced mass-term drastically alters energy spectrum and intra-cone transmission.

Bias influences inter-cone transmission, enabling control over transport.

Klein tunneling is reduced by the mass-term, aiding carrier confinement.

Abstract

The important experimental advances in graphene fabrication and its peculiar transport properties motivated researchers to utilize graphene as a potential basis for the next generation of fast and smart electronic devices. In this article, we investigate the influence of a potential substrate on the transport properties of a biased AA-stacked n-p-n bilayer graphene junction (AA-BLG). Using the Dirac Hamiltonian with the transfer matrix approach we obtain the transmission probabilities and thus the respective conductance. In the presence of the induced mass-term, the energy spectrum and the intra-cone transmission drastically change while the inter-cone transmission remains zero. On the other hand, the bias slightly alters the energy spectrum but it significantly affects the transport properties due to its ability to switch on the inter-cone transmission. In addition, we find that Klein tunneling is attenuated in the presence of the induced mass-term which can improve the carriers confinement in such configurations. Our findings provide possible experimental measurements to determine the interlayer coupling and the induced mass terms in graphene bilayer based on conductance and band structure measurements.