We study numerically the effects of edge and bulk disorder on the conductance of graphene nanoribbons. We compute the conductance suppression due to localization induced by edge scattering. We find that even for weak edge roughness, conductance steps are suppressed and transport gaps appear. These gaps are approximately inversely proportional to the nanoribbon width. On/off conductance ratios grow exponentially with the nanoribbon length. Our results impose severe limitations to the use of graphene in ballistic nanowires.
@article{arxiv.0806.3777,
title = {Conductance quantization and transport gap in disordered graphene nanoribbons},
author = {Eduardo R. Mucciolo and Antonio H. Castro Neto and Caio H. Lewenkopf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.3777},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
5 pages, 7 figures; references added, typos fixed, to appear in Phys. Rev B