Resonant tunneling in disordered borophene nanoribbons with line defects

TL;DR

This study investigates how line defects affect electron transport in disordered borophene nanoribbons, revealing resonant tunneling phenomena, metal-insulator transitions, and potential for nanodevice design.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of electron transport in disordered borophene nanoribbons with line defects, highlighting resonant tunneling and tunable electronic properties.

Findings

Line defects significantly reduce electron transport in BNRs.

Resonant peaks in conductance can occur despite disorder.

Metal-insulator transition is achievable by changing nanoribbon width.

Abstract

Very recently, borophene has been attracting extensive and ongoing interest as the new wonder material with structural polymorphism and superior attributes, showing that the structural imperfection of line defects (LDs) occurs widely at the interface between $\nu_{1/5}$ ($\chi_3$) and $\nu_{1/6}$ ($\beta_{12}$) boron sheets. Motivated by these experiments, here we present a theoretical study of electron transport through two-terminal disordered borophene nanoribbons (BNRs) with random distribution of LDs. Our results indicate that LDs could strongly affect the electron transport properties of BNRs. In the absence of LDs, both $\nu_{1/5}$ and $\nu_{1/6}$ BNRs exhibit metallic behavior, in agreement with experiments. While in the presence of LDs, the overall electron transport ability is dramatically decreased, but some resonant peaks of conductance quantum can be found in the transmission spectrum of any disordered BNR with arbitrary arrangement of LDs. These disordered BNRs exhibit metal-insulator transition by varying nanoribbon width with tunable transmission gap in the insulating regime. Furthermore, the bond currents present fringe patterns and two evolution phenomena of resonant peaks are revealed for disordered BNRs with different widths. These results may help for understanding structure-property relationships and designing LD-based nanodevices.