Abstract
Density-functional study of strain effects on the electronic band structure and transport properties of the graphene nanoribbons (GNR) is presented. We apply a uniaxial strain in the (nearest-neighbor) and (second-nearest-neighbor) directions, related to the deformation of zigzag- and armchair-edge GNRs (AGNR and ZGNR), respectively. We calculate the quantum conductance and band structures of the GNR using the Wannier function in a strain range from to (minus and plus signs show compression and tensile strain). As strain increases, depending on the AGNR family type, the electrical conductivity changes from an insulator to a conductor. This is accompanied by a variation in the electron and hole effective masses. The compression in ZGNR shifts some bands to below the Fermi level and the quantum conductance does not change but the tensile causes an increase in the quantum conductance to near the . For transverse direction, it is very sensitive to strain and the tensile causes an increase in the conductance while the compressive decreases the conductance at first but increases it later.
1 More- Received 31 October 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.81.125409
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