We investigate ground and excited state transport through small (d = 70 nm) graphene quantum dots. The successive spin filling of orbital states is detected by measuring the ground state energy as a function of a magnetic field. For a magnetic field in-plane of the quantum dot the Zemann splitting of spin states is measured. The results are compatible with a g-factor of 2 and we detect a spin-filling sequence for a series of states which is reasonable given the strength of exchange interaction effects expected for graphene.
The band modulation of the silicene and graphene quantum dots is investigated by a first-principles method. This study includes the ordinary silicene and graphene quantum dots and the embedded quantum dots in the hydrogenated silicene and graphene. The shapes and sizes of quantum dots are recognized as important factors for the electronic properties. We studied several types of quantum dots: triangular, parallelogram, rectangular, hexagonal dots. It demonstrates the energy gap of the quantum dot can be tuned by the dot size, the larger of the dot the smaller the energy gap. Moreover, the shape…
Higher harmonic generation in plane graphene quantum dots initiated by intense coherent radiation is investigated, using dynamical Hartree-Fock mean-field theory. A microscopic theory describing the extreme nonlinear optical response of plane graphene quantum dots is developed. The closed set of differential equations for the single-particle density matrix at the graphene quantum dots-strong laser field multiphoton interaction is solved numerically. The obtained solutions indicate the significance of the type of edge and lateral size, and bandgap and laser field strength in the high harmonic g…
We present Coulomb blockade measurements in a graphene double dot system. The coupling of the dots to the leads and between the dots can be tuned by graphene in-plane gates. The coupling is a non-monotonic function of the gate voltage. Using a purely capacitive model, we extract all relevant energy scales of the double dot system.
We present a theory of excitonic processes in gate controlled graphene quantum dots. The dependence of the energy gap on shape, size and edge for graphene quantum dots with up to a million atoms is predicted. Using a combination of tight-binding, Hartree-Fock and configuration interaction methods, we show that triangular graphene quantum dots with zigzag edges exhibit optical transitions simultaneously in the THz, visible and UV spectral ranges, determined by strong electron-electron and excitonic interactions. The relationship between optical properties and finite magnetic moment and charge d…
In this paper we analyse the electronic properties of Dirac electrons in finite-size ribbons and in circular and hexagonal quantum dots made of graphene.
We study and compare two analytic models of graphene quantum dots for calculating charge relaxation times due to electron-phonon interaction. Recently, charge relaxation processes in graphene quantum dots have been probed experimentally and here we provide a theoretical estimate of relaxations times. By comparing a model with pure edge confinement to a model with electrostatic confinement, we find that the latter features much larger relaxation times. Interestingly, relaxation times in electrostatically defined quantum dots are predicted to exceed the experimentally observed lower bound of ~10…
We report on theoretical studies of transport through graphene quantum dots weakly coupled to external ferromagnetic leads. The calculations are performed by exact diagonalization of a tight-binding Hamiltonian with finite Coulomb correlations for graphene sheet and by using the real-time diagrammatic technique in the sequential and cotunneling regimes. The emphasis is put on the role of graphene flake shape and spontaneous edge magnetization in transport characteristics, such as the differential conductance, tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) and the shot noise. It is shown that for certain sh…
We propose how to form spin qubits in graphene. A crucial requirement to achieve this goal is to find quantum dot states where the usual valley degeneracy in bulk graphene is lifted. We show that this problem can be avoided in quantum dots based on ribbons of graphene with semiconducting armchair boundaries. For such a setup, we find the energies and the exact wave functions of bound states, which are required for localized qubits. Additionally, we show that spin qubits in graphene can not only be coupled between nearest neighbor quantum dots via Heisenberg exchange interaction but also over l…
We study the conductance spectrum of graphene quantum dots, both single and multiple cases. The single electron tunneling phenomenon is investigated and the periodicity, amplitude and line shape of the Coulomb blockade oscillations at low temperatures are obtained. Further, we discuss the transport behavior when multiple dots are assembled in array and find a phase transition of conductance spectra from individual Coulomb blockade to collective Coulomb blockade.
Graphene and bilayer graphene quantum dots are promising hosts for spin qubits with long coherence times. Although recent technological improvements make it possible to confine single electrons electrostatically in bilayer graphene quantum dots, and their spin and valley texture of the single particle spectrum has been studied in detail, their relaxation dynamics remains still unexplored. Here, we report on transport through a high-frequency gate controlled single-electron bilayer graphene quantum dot. By transient current spectroscopy of single-electron spin states, we extract a lower bound o…
We study the transport through evanescent waves in graphene quantum dots of different geometries. The transmission is suppressed when the leads are attached to edges of the same majority sublattice. Otherwise, the transmission depends exponentially on the distance between leads in rectangular dots, and as a power law in circular dots. The transmission through junctions where the transmitted and reflected currents belong to the opposite valley as the incoming one depends on details of the lattice structure at distances comparable to the atomic spacing.
This is a review on graphene quantum dots and their use as a host for spin qubits. We discuss the advantages but also the challenges to use graphene quantum dots for spin qubits as compared to the more standard materials like GaAs. We start with an overview of this young and fascinating field and will then discuss gate-tunable quantum dots in detail. We calculate the bound states for three different quantum dot architectures where a bulk gap allows for confinement via electrostatic fields: (i) graphene nanoribbons with armchair boundary, (ii) a disc in single-layer graphene, and (iii) a disc i…
Graphene quantum dots are considered as promising alternatives to quantum dots in III-V semiconductors, e.g., for the use as spin qubits due to their consistency made of light atoms including spin-free nuclei which both imply relatively long spin decoherene times. However, this potential has not been realized in experiments so far, most likely, due to a missing control of the edge configurations of the quantum dots. Thus, a more fundamental investigation of Graphene quantum dots appears to be necessary including a full control of the wave function properties most favorably during transport spe…
We suggest a simple approach to calculate the local density of states that effectively applies to any structure created by an axially symmetric potential on a continuous graphene sheet such as circular graphene quantum dots or rings. Calculations performed for the graphene quantum dot studied in a recent scanning tunneling microscopy measurement [{\sl Gutierrez et al. Nat. Phys. \textbf{12}, 1069--1075 (2016)}] show an excellent experimental-theoretical agreement.
We present graphene quantum dots endowed with addition energies as large as 1.6 eV, fabricated by the controlled rupture of a graphene sheet subjected to a large electron current in air. The size of the quantum dot islands is estimated to be in the 1 nm range. The large addition energies allow for Coulomb blockade at room temperature, with possible application to single-electron devices.
We present electronic structure and quantum transport calculations that predict conducting channels induced in graphene quantum dots by lines of adsorbed hydrogen atoms to function as highly efficient, experimentally realizable valley filters, accumulators and switches. The underlying physics is a novel property of graphene Dirac point resonances (DPRs) that is revealed here, namely, that an electric current passing through a DPR-mediated conducting channel in a given direction is carried by electrons of em only one of the two graphene valleys. Our predictions apply to lines of hydrogen atoms …
Within the Landauer transport formalism we demonstrate that conductance zeroes are possible in bipartite systems at half-filling when leads are contacted to different sublattice sites. In particular, we investigate the application of this theory to graphene quantum dots with leads in the armchair configuration. The obtained conductance cancellation is robust in the presence of any single-site impurity.
Surface graphene guides were interfaced with an array of individual semiconductor quantum dots, whose position was commensurate with the optical guide modes. The surface guide served as a channel for a Field Effect Transistor (FET) while the dots were placed within the capacitor formed between the graphene channel and the gate electrode. We report on negative differential photo-related conductance under light and a diminishing fluorescence effect as a function of bias. We suggest that the quenched fluorescence may be hindered, to some degree, by incorporating the QD in a resonator, which is tu…
We analyze the single particle states at the edges of disordered graphene quantum dots. We show that generic graphene quantum dots support a number of edge states proportional to circumference of the dot over the lattice constant. Our analytical theory agrees well with numerical simulations. Perturbations breaking electron-hole symmetry like next-nearest neighbor hopping or edge impurities shift the edge states away from zero energy but do not change their total amount. We discuss the possibility of detecting the edge states in an antidot array and provide an upper bound on the magnetic moment…
We suggest a way of confining quasiparticles by an external potential in a small region of a graphene strip. Transversal electron motion plays a crucial role in this confinement. Properties of thus obtained graphene quantum dots are investigated theoretically for different types of the boundary conditions at the edges of the strip. The (quasi)bound states exist in all systems considered. At the same time, the dependence of the conductance on the gate voltage carries an information about the shape of the edges.
We report on the observation of periodic conductance oscillations near quantum Hall plateaus in suspended graphene nanoribbons. They are attributed to single quantum dots that form in the narrowest part of the ribbon, in the valleys and hills of a disorder potential. In a wide flake with two gates, a double-dot system's signature has been observed. Electrostatic confinement is enabled in single-layer graphene due to the gaps that form between Landau levels, suggesting a way to create gate-defined quantum dots that can be accessed with quantum Hall edge states.
This work investigates the electronic properties of the energy spectrum of a hybrid system composed of (i) a circular quantum dot of monolayer graphene surrounded by an infinite sheet of AA-stacked bilayer graphene and (ii) a circular quantum dot of AA-stacked graphene bilayer surrounded by infinite monolayer graphene. We establish analytical findings for the related energy levels and wave functions using the continuum model and the zigzag boundary conditions at the graphene monolayer-bilayer interface. We investigate the effects of perpendicular magnetic, dot radius, and electrical fields on …
We present a simple technique to fabricate graphene quantum dots in a cryostat. It relies upon the controlled rupture of a suspended graphene sheet subjected to the application of a large electron current. This results in the in-situ formation of a clean and ultra-narrow constriction, which hosts one quantum dot, and occasionally a few quantum dots in series. Conductance spectroscopy indicates that individual quantum dots can possess an addition energy as large as 180 meV and a level spacing as large as 25 meV. Our technique has several assets: (i) the dot is suspended, thus the electrostatic …
We demonstrate theoretically that quantum dots in bilayers of graphene can be realized. A position-dependent doping breaks the equivalence between the upper and lower layer and lifts the degeneracy of the positive and negative momentum states of the dot. Numerical results show the simultaneous presence of electron and hole confined states for certain doping profiles and a remarkable angular momentum dependence of the quantum dot spectrum which is in sharp contrast with that for conventional semiconductor quantum dots. We predict that the optical spectrum will consist of a series of non-equidis…
We present transport measurements on quantum dots of sizes 45, 60 and 80 nm etched with an Ar/O2-plasma into a single graphene sheet, allowing a size comparison avoiding effects from different graphene flakes. The transport gaps and addition energies increase with decreasing dot size, as expected, and display a strong correlation, suggesting the same physical origin for both, i.e. disorder-induced localization in presence of a small confinement gap. Gate capacitance measurements indicate that the dot charges are located in the narrow device region as intended. A dominant role of disorder is fu…
We use numerically exact Chebyshev expansion and kernel polynomial methods to study transport through circular graphene quantum dots in the framework of a tight-binding honeycomb lattice model. Our focus lies on the regime where individual modes of the electrostatically defined dot dominate the charge carrier dynamics. In particular, we discuss the scattering of an injected Dirac electron wave packet for a single quantum dot, electron confinement in the dot, the optical excitation of dot-bound modes, and the propagation of an electronic excitation along a linear array of dots.
We show that the low temperature electron transport properties of chemically functionalized graphene can be explained as sequential tunneling of charges through a two dimensional array of graphene quantum dots (GQD). Below 15 K, a total suppression of current due to Coulomb blockade through GQD array was observed. Temperature dependent current-gate voltage characteristics show Coulomb oscillations with energy scales of 6.2-10 meV corresponding to GQD sizes of 5-8 nm while resistance data exhibit an Efros-Shklovskii variable range hopping arising from structural and size induced disorder.
Newly synthesized nanostructures of graphene appear as a promising breeding ground for new technology. Therefore, it is important to identify the role played by the boundary conditions in their electronic features. In this contribution we use the non-equilibrium Green's function method coupled to tight-binding theory to calculate and compare the current patterns of hexagonal graphene quantum dots, with contacts placed at different edge locations. Our results reveal the formation of current vortices when the symmetry of the contact geometry is in conflict with the symmetries of the quantum dot.…
Graphene is considered to be a promising material for future electronics. The envisaged transistor applications often rely on precision cutting of graphene sheets with nanometer accuracy. In this letter we demonstrate graphene-based quantum dots created by using atomic force microscopy (AFM) with tip-assisted electrochemical etching. This lithography technique provides resolution of about 20 nm, which can probably be further improved by employing sharper tips and better humidity control. The behavior of our smallest dots in magnetic field has allowed us to identify the charge neutrality point …
Electronic properties of triangular and hexagonal nano-scale quantum dots (QDs) of Silicene and bilayer graphene are studied. It is shown that the low-energy edge-localized electronic states, existing within the size-quantized gap are easily tunable by electric field. The appearance and field evolution of the electronic gap in these zero energy states (ZES) is shown to be very sensitive to QD geometry that permits to design the field-effect scalable QD devices with electronic properties on-demand.
We report on the fabrication and characterization of etched graphene quantum dots (QDs) on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and SiO2 with different island diameters. We perform a statistical analysis of Coulomb peak spacings over a wide energy range. For graphene QDs on hBN, the standard deviation of the normalized peak spacing distribution decreases with increasing QD diameter, whereas for QDs on SiO2 no diameter dependency is observed. In addition, QDs on hBN are more stable under the influence of perpendicular magnetic fields up to 9T. Both results indicate a substantially reduced substrate in…
We study numerically the optical properties of low-buckled silicene and AB-stacked bilayer graphene quantum dots subjected to an external electric field, which is normal to their surface. Within the tight-binding model, the optical absorption is calculated for quantum dots, of triangular and hexagonal shapes, with zigzag and armchair edge terminations. We show that in triangular silicene clusters with zigzag edges a rich and widely tunable infrared absorption peak structure originates from transitions involving zero energy states. The edge of absorption in silicene quantum dots undergoes red s…
We theoretically investigate the effects of long-range disorder and electron-electron interactions on the optical properties of hexagonal armchair graphene quantum dots consisting of up to 10806 atoms. The numerical calculations are performed using a combination of tight-binding, mean-field Hubbard and configuration interaction methods. Imperfections in the graphene quantum dots are modelled as a long-range random potential landscape, giving rise to electron-hole puddles. We show that, when the electron-hole puddles are present, tight-binding method gives a poor description of the low-energy a…
In the field of condensed matter, graphene plays a central role as an emerging material for nanoelectronics. Nevertheless, graphene is a semimetal, which constitutes a severe limitation for some future applications. Therefore, a lot of efforts are being made to develop semiconductor materials whose structure is compatible with the graphene lattice. In this perspective, little pieces of graphene represent a promising alternative. In particular, their electronic, optical and spin properties can be in principle controlled by designing their size, shape and edges. As an example, graphene nanoribbo…
The structure stability and electronic properties of edge carboxylated hexagonal and triangular graphene quantum dots are investigated by using density functional theory. The calculated binding energies show that the hexagonal clusters with armchair edges have the highest stability among all other flakes. The binding energy of carboxylated graphene quantum dots increases by increasing the number of attached carboxyl groups. Our study shows that the total dipole moment significantly increases by adding COOH with the highest values observed in triangular clusters. The edge states in triangular g…
Considerable efforts have been made to trap massless Dirac fermions in graphene monolayer, but only quasi-bound states are realized in continuous graphene sheets up to now. Here, we demonstrate the realization of bound states in nanoscale graphene quantum dots (GQDs) in a continuous graphene sheet. The GQDs are electronically isolated from the surrounding continuous graphene sheet by circular boundaries, which are generated by strong coupling between graphene and substrate. By using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), we observe single-electron charging states of the GQDs, seen as Coulomb osc…
Electrostatic confinement of charge carriers in graphene is governed by Klein tunneling, a relativistic quantum process in which particle-hole transmutation leads to unusual anisotropic transmission at pn junction boundaries. Reflection and transmission at these novel potential barriers should affect the quantum interference of electronic wavefunctions near these boundaries. Here we report the use of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to map the electronic structure of Dirac fermions confined by circular graphene pn junctions. These effective quantum dots were fabricated using a new technique…
We present theoretical results based on mean-field and exact many-body approaches showing that in bilayer triangular graphene quantum dots with zigzag edges the magnetism can be controlled by an external vertical electric-field. We demonstrate that without electric field the spins of the two layers of the quantum dot interact ferromagnetically. At a critical value of the electric-field, the total spin of the bilayer structure can be turned off or reduced to a single localized spin, a qubit isolated from contacts and free from interaction with nuclear spins.
We present an electronic transport experiment in graphene where both classical and quantum mechanical charge detector back-action on a quantum dot are investigated. The device consists of two stacked graphene quantum dots separated by a thin layer of boron nitride. This device is fabricated by van der Waals stacking and is equipped with separate source and drain contacts to both dots. By applying a finite bias to one quantum dot, a current is induced in the other unbiased dot. We present an explanation of the observed measurement-induced current based on strong capacitive coupling and energy d…
We report on transport characteristics of quantum dot devices etched entirely in graphene. At large sizes, they behave as conventional single-electron transistors, exhibiting periodic Coulomb blockade peaks. For quantum dots smaller than 100 nm, the peaks become strongly non-periodic indicating a major contribution of quantum confinement. Random peak spacing and its statistics are well described by the theory of chaotic neutrino (Dirac) billiards. Short constrictions of only a few nm in width remain conductive and reveal a confinement gap of up to 0.5eV, which demonstrates the in-principle pos…
Realistic relaxed configurations of triaxially strained graphene quantum dots are obtained from unbiased atomistic mechanical simulations. The local electronic structure and quantum transport characteristics of y-junctions based on such dots are studied, revealing that the quasi-uniform pseudomagnetic field induced by strain restricts transport to Landau level- and edge state-assisted resonant tunneling. Valley degeneracy is broken in the presence of an external field, allowing the selective filtering of the valley and chirality of the states assisting in the resonant tunneling. Asymmetric str…
We theoretically investigate the effects of atomic defect related short-range disorders and electron-electron interactions on Anderson type localization and the magnetic properties of hexagonal armchair graphene quantum dots using an extended mean-field Hubbard model. We observe that randomly distributed defects with concentrations between 1-5\% of the total number of atoms leads to localization alongside magnetic puddle-like structures. We show that localization lenght is not affected by magnetization if there is an even distribution of defects between the two sublattices of the honeycomb lat…
We present realistic simulations of quantum confinement effects in ballistic graphene quantum dots with linear dimensions of 10 to 40 nm. We determine wavefunctions and energy level statistics in the presence of disorder resulting from edge roughness, charge impurities, or short-ranged scatterers. Marked deviations from a simple Dirac billiard for massless fermions are found. We find a remarkably stable dependence of the nearest-neighbor level spacing on edge roughness suggesting that the roughness of fabricated devices can be potentially characterized by the distribution of measured Coulomb b…
We report tunneling spectroscopy experiments on a bilayer graphene double quantum dot device that can be tuned by all-graphene lateral gates. The diameter of the two quantum dots are around 50 nm and the constrictions acting as tunneling barriers are 30 nm in width. The double quantum dot features addition energies on the order of 20 meV. Charge stability diagrams allow us to study the tunable interdot coupling energy as well as the spectrum of the electronic excited states on a number of individual triple points over a large energy range. The obtained constant level spacing of 1.75 meV over a…
Spin transitions driven by a periodically varying electric potential in dilute fluorinated graphene quantum dots are investigated. Flakes of monolayer graphene are considered as well as electrostatic electron traps induced in bilayer graphene. The stationary states are obtained within the tight-binding approach and are used to the basis of eigenstates to describe the system dynamics. The dilute fluorination of the top layer lifts the valley degeneracy of the confined states and attenuates the orbital magnetic dipole moments due to current circulation within the flake. Moreover, the spin-orbit …
We investigate the in-plane oscillations of the relaxed shape graphene due to externally applied tensile edge stress along both the armchair and zigzag directions. We show that the total elastic energy density is enhanced with temperature for the case of applied tensile edge stress along the zigzag direction. Thermo-electromechanical effects are treated via pseudomorphic vector potentials to analyze the influence of these coupled effects on the bandstructures of bilayer graphene quantum dots (QDs). We report that the level crossing between ground and first excited states in the localized edge …
We examine a graphene quantum dot formed by combining an electric and a uniform magnetic field. The electric field creates a smooth quantum well potential while the magnetic field induces an exponential tail to the dot states. The states peak in the well and the electrostatic barrier region as a result of the Klein tunneling effect. Coupling between dot states which peak in different regions can be achieved with the electric and magnetic fields. The tunability of this dot with moderate external fields could be used for designing quantum devices in monolayer graphene.
The mean-field Hubbard model is used to investigate the formation of the antiferromagnetic phase in hexagonal graphene rings with inner zigzag edges. The outer edge of the ring was taken to be either zigzag or armchair, and we found that both types of structures can have a larger antiferromagnetic interaction as compared with hexagonal dots. This difference could be partially ascribed to the larger number of zigzag edges per unit area in rings than in dots. Furthermore, edge states localized on the inner ring edge are found to hybridize differently than the edge states of dots, which results i…
We present a highly controllable double quantum dot device based on bilayer graphene. Using a device architecture of interdigitated gate fingers, we can control the interdot tunnel coupling between 1 to 4 GHz and the mutual capacitive coupling between 0.2 and 0.6 meV, independently of the charge occupation of the quantum dots. The charging energy and hence the dot size remains nearly unchanged. The tuning range of the tunnel coupling covers the operating regime of typical silicon and GaAs spin qubit devices.
By means of an envelope function analysis, we perform a numerical investigation of the conductance behavior of a graphene structure consisting of two regions (dots) connected to the entrance and exit leads through constrictions and separated by a potential barrier. We show that the conductance of the double dot depends on the symmetry of the structure and that this effect survives also in the presence of a low level of disorder, in analogy of what we had previously found for a double dot obtained in a semiconductor heterostructure. In graphene, this phenomenon is less dramatic and, in particul…
Using the tight-binding approximation we calculated the magnetic susceptibility of graphene quantum dots (GQD) of different geometrical shapes and sizes, smaller than the magnetic length, when the magnetic properties are governed by the electron edge states. Two types of edge states can be discerned: the zero-energy states (ZES) located exactly at the zero-energy Dirac point, and the dispersed edge states (DES) with the energy close, but not exactly equal to zero. DES are responsible for the temperature independent diamagnetic response, while ZES provide the temperature dependent spin Curie pa…
Thanks to its intrinsic ability to preserve spin coherence, graphene is a prime material for spintronics. In this review article, we summarize recent achievements related to spintronics in graphene quantum dots and motivate this field from a spintronics and a materials science point of view. We focus on theory but also discuss recent experiments. The main sources of spin decoherence are interactions with lattice excitations and the hyperfine interaction with present nuclear spins. We explain effective spin-phonon coupling in detail and present a generic power law for the spin relaxation time T…
Artificial molecular states of double quantum dots defined in bilayer graphene are studied with the atomistic tight-binding and its low-energy continuum approximation. We indicate that the extended electron wave functions have opposite parities on each of the sublattices at both graphene layers and that the ground-state wave function components change from bonding to antibonding with the interdot distance. In the weak coupling limit -- the most relevant for the quantum dots defined electrostatically -- the signatures of the interdot coupling include -- for the two-electron ground state -- form…
Due to effect of Klein tunneling two-dimensional graphene quantum dots do not possess genuine bound states but quasi-bound (resonant tunneling) states only. We discuss in detail the attempt to describe these states within the framework of the Dirac pseudo-fermion model for circular dot. We demonstrate explicitly that introduced earlier the so called "resonance condition" corresponds to inconsistent system of linear equations obtained from matching conditions on the boundary of the quantum dot when one try to use it for complex energy values and to the case of total reflection for the energies …
Dirac fermions interacting with a cylindrically symmetric quantum dot potential created in single and bilayer graphene are not confined but form quasi-bound states. The broadening of these quasi-bound states (i. e. the inverse of their lifetimes) decreases (increases) with the orbital momentum of the electron in the case of graphene (bilayer). Quasi-bound states with energy below (above) the barrier height are dominantly electron(hole)-like. A remarkable decrease of the energy level broadening is predicted for electron energies close to the barrier height, which are a consequence of the total …
We present a tight-binding theory of triangular graphene quantum dots (TGQD) with zigzag edge and broken sublattice symmetry in external magnetic field. The lateral size quantization opens an energy gap and broken sublattice symmetry results in a shell of degenerate states at the Fermi level. We derive a semi-analytical form for zero-energy states in a magnetic field and show that the shell remains degenerate in a magnetic field, in analogy to the 0th Landau level of bulk graphene. The magnetic field closes the energy gap and leads to the crossing of valence and conduction states with the zero…
We theoretically analyse the possibility to electrostatically confine electrons in circular quantum dot arrays, impressed on contacted graphene nanoribbons by top gates. Utilising exact numerical techniques, we compute the scattering efficiency of a single dot and demonstrate that for small-sized scatterers the cross-sections are dominated by quantum effects, where resonant scattering leads to a series of quasi-bound dot states. Calculating the conductance and the local density of states for quantum dot superlattices we show that the resonant carrier transport through such graphene-based nanos…
