Graphene nanopores as negative differential resistance devices

Abstract

We present graphene nanopores as new negative differential resistance (NDR) devices, and study their quantum transport properties using non-equilibrium Green's function and the density functional tight binding method. The proposed device structure is created on intrinsic armchair-edged graphene nanoribbons with uniform widths, where the central scattering region has a nanopore in the interior, and the two ends of the nanoribbon act naturally as connecting electrodes. We show that nitrogen-passivated scattering regions generally result in pronounced NDR properties, while hydrogen-passivated ones do not. This NDR effect occurs at low bias voltages, below 1V, and achieves extraordinarily high p..