Computational Study of Edge Configuration and Quantum Confinement Effects on Graphene Nanoribbon Transport

Abstract

We investigated edge configuration and quantum confinement effects on electron transport in armchair-edged graphene nanoribbons (A-GNRs) by using a computational approach. We found that the edge bond relaxation has a significant influence not only on the bandgap energy but also on the electron effective mass. We also found that A-GNRs with <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$N = \hbox{3}m$</tex></formula> family ( <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex Notation="TeX">$N$</tex></formula> is the number of atoms in its transverse direction, and <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX"> $m$</tex></formula> is a positive integer) exhibits smaller effective mass by comparing it at the same bandgap energy. As a result, A-GNRs with <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$N = \hbox{3}m$</tex></formula> family are found to be favorable for use in channels of field-effect transistors.