Tailoring giant quantum transport anisotropy in disordered nanoporous graphenes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through large-scale simulations that electrical transport anisotropy in nanoporous graphenes can be significantly enhanced by disorder, enabling advanced quantum device engineering.

Contribution

It reveals that disorder not only preserves but can amplify quantum transport anisotropy in nanoporous graphenes, a novel insight for nanoscale electronic control.

Findings

Disorder enhances quantum transport anisotropy in NPGs.

Transport anisotropy is resilient to structural disorder.

Systematic engineering of quantum transport in NPGs is possible.

Abstract

During the last 15 years bottom-up on-surface synthesis has been demonstrated as an efficient way to synthesize carbon nanostructures with atomic precision, opening the door to unprecedented electronic control at the nanoscale. Nanoporous graphenes (NPGs) fabricated as two-dimensional arrays of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) represent one of the key recent breakthroughs in the field. NPGs interestingly display in-plane transport anisotropy of charge carriers, and such anisotropy was shown to be tunable by modulating quantum interference. Herein, using large-scale quantum transport simulations, we show that electrical anisotropy in NPGs is not only resilient to disorder but can further be massively enhanced by its presence. This outcome paves the way to systematic engineering of quantum transport in NPGs as a novel concept for efficient quantum devices and architectures.