I-V Characteristics of Graphene Nanoribbon/h-BN Heterojunctions and Resonant Tunneling

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to analyze the electrical properties and quantum tunneling behavior of graphene/h-BN heterojunctions and nanoribbons, revealing step-wise I-V characteristics due to double barrier effects.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed DFT and NEGF analysis of I-V characteristics and tunneling in graphene/h-BN heterojunctions and nanoribbons, highlighting unique quantum effects.

Findings

Quantum double barrier tunneling observed in heterojunctions.

Step-wise I-V characteristics due to spiky transmission functions.

Absence of negative resistance, unlike typical semiconductor double barriers.

Abstract

We present the first principle calculations of the electrical properties of graphene sheet/h-BN heterojunction(GS/h-BN) and 11-armchair graphene nanoribbon heterojunction(11-AGNR/h-BN), which were carried out using the density functional theory(DFT) method and the non-equilibrium Green's function(NEGF) technique. Since 11-AGNR belongs to the conductive (3n-1)-family of AGNR, both are metallic nanomaterials with two transverse arrays of h-BN, which is a wide-gap semi-conductor. The two h-BN arrays act as double barriers. The transmission functions(TF) and I-V characteristics of GS/h-BN and 11-AGNR/h-BN are calculated by DFT and NEGF, and they show that quantum double barrier tunneling occurs. The TF becomes very spiky in both materials, and it leads to step-wise I-V characteristics rather than negative resistance, which is the typical behavior of double barriers in semiconductors.