The tuneability and control of quantum nanostructures in two-dimensional materials offer promising perspectives for their use in future electronics. It is hence necessary to analyze quantum transport in such nanostructures. Material properties such as a complex dispersion, topology, and charge carriers with multiple degrees of freedom, are appealing for novel device functionalities but complicate their theoretical description. Here, we study quantum tunnelling transport across a few-electron bilayer graphene quantum dot. We demonstrate how to uniquely identify single- and two-electron dot states' orbital, spin, and valley composition from differential conductance in a finite magnetic field. Furthermore, we show that the transport features manifest splittings in the dot's spin and valley multiplets induced by interactions and magnetic field (the latter splittings being a consequence of bilayer graphene's Berry curvature). Our results elucidate spin- and valley-dependent tunnelling mechanisms and will help to utilize bilayer graphene quantum dots, e.g., as spin and valley qubits.
We demonstrate that single layer graphene exhibits the electronic structure of a bilayer when it is connected to two gated bilayers. The energy gap characteristic for gated bilayer is induced in the single layer and it persists for distances separating the bilayers up to 20 nm. Most importantly, we report on the appearance of topologically protected gapless state localized in a single graphene layer when the distant bilayers differ in the stacking order. The one-dimensional current in the topological state flows in a single layer graphene, and this finding suggests a new exploitation of graphe…
Additional component in multi-layer epitaxial graphene grown on the C-terminated surface of SiC, which exhibits the characteristic electronic properties of a AB-stacked graphene bilayer, is identified in magneto-optical response of this material. We show that these inclusions represent a well-defined platform for accurate magneto-spectroscopy of unperturbed graphene bilayers.
Nanoindentation of bilayer graphene is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. We compared our simulation results with those from elasticity theory as based on the nonlinear Föppl-Hencky equations with rigid boundary condition. The force deflection values of bilayer graphene are compered to those of monolayer graphene. Young's modulus of bilayer graphene is estimated to be 0.8 TPa which is close to the value for graphite. Moreover, an almost flat bilayer membrane at low temperature under central load has a 14$%$ smaller Young's modulus as compared to the one at room temperature.
We show that bilayer graphene exhibits magneto-electric effects that are formally similar to those commonly seen in band insulators with broken inversion and time-reversal symmetries. Three unusual features characterize the magneto-electric responses exhibited by bilayer graphene: (i) unlike most other magneto-electric media, bilayer graphene is a conductor, (ii) bilayer graphene has a non-quantized magneto-electric coupling even though its electronic structure does not break parity and time-reversal symmetry, and (iii) the magnitude of the magneto-electric coupling in bilayer graphene is dete…
We reveal that there exists a class of graphene structures (a sub-class of bilayer graphene nanoribbons) which has unusually strong optical response in the terahertz (THz) and far infrared (FIR) regime. The peak conductance of terahertz/FIR active bilayer ribbons is around two orders of magnitude higher than the universal conductance of $e^2/4\hbar$ observed in graphene sheets. The criterion for the terahertz/FIR active sub-class is a bilayer graphene nanoribbon with one-dimensional massless Dirac Fermion energy dispersion near the $Γ$ point. Our results overcome a significant obstacle that hi…
Quantum manipulation of valleys in bilayer graphene is investigated. We establish an effective Schrodinger model, and identify two key mechanisms for valley manipulation - band structure warping and generalized valley-orbit interaction. Specifically, we implement valley qubits / FETs in bilayer graphene, as prospective quantum devices to build valley-based quantum / classical information processing.
Heterostructures formed between two different van der Waals materials enable interactions and functionalities absent in each component. In this work we show that vicinity to an atomically thin WSe$_2$ sheet dramatically impacts the energies of the symmetry-broken low Landau levels of bilayer graphene, possibly due to screening. We present a systematic study of the magnetic field and electrical displacement field dependences of the Landau level gaps at filling factor $ν$ = 1, 2, 3, and compare to BN encapsulated pristine bilayer graphene. The exchange-dominated energy splitting between the N = …
Twisted bilayer graphenes with magical angle exhibit strongly correlated electronic properties because of the isolated flat band at the Fermi level. We studied the twisted bilayer graphene with substrates on both layers. The substrate induce Kekul$\acute{e}$ distortion for each graphene layer. The systems are investigated by both continuous Dirac Fermion model and tight binding model. The two investigations give similar conclusion that isolated flat band with ultra-narrow bandwidth could appear.
The momentum transport in ultraclean bilayer graphene is characterized by the viscous transport. In quantizing magnetic field the momentum current passes through the guiding centers of cyclotron orbits. In this study we derive the quantized Hall viscosity of bilayer graphene that is the next topological feature after the quantum Hall effect. This can be detected in the non-local magnetoresistivity measurements that varies with the quantized steps of magnetoresistivity.
Magnetotransport measurements on Hall bar devices fabricated on purely monolayer epitaxial graphene on Silicon Carbide (SiC/G) show a very tight spread in carrier concentration and mobility across wafer- size dimensions. In contrast, SiC/G devices containing bilayer graphene domains display variations in their electronic properties linked to the amount of bilayer content.
We discuss the physics of the tunable bandgap in bilayer graphene with the gate voltage and doping. A comparison with experimental data obtained by Kuzmenko et al [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{80}, 165406 (2009)] demonstrates the good agreement.
Using electrical transport experiments and shot noise thermometry, we investigate electron-phonon heat transfer rate in a suspended bilayer graphene. Contrary to monolayer graphene with heat flow via three-body supercollision scattering, we find that regular electron - optical phonon scattering in bilayer graphene provides the dominant scattering process at electron energies $ \gtrsim 0.15$ eV. We determine the strength of these intrinsic heat flow processes of bilayer graphene and find good agreement with theoretical estimates when both zone edge and zone center optical phonons are taken into…
We theoretically investigate a folded bilayer graphene structure as an experimentally realizable platform to produce the one-dimensional topological zero-line modes. We demonstrate that the folded bilayer graphene under an external gate potential enables tunable topologically conducting channels to be formed in the folded region, and that a perpendicular magnetic field can be used to enhance the conducting when external impurities are present. We also show experimentally that our proposed folded bilayer graphene structure can be fabricated in a controllable manner. Our proposed system greatly …
In this paper, we study the quantum properties of a bilayer graphene with (asymmetry) line defects. The localized states are found around the line defects. Thus, the line defects on one certain layer of the bilayer graphene can lead to an electric transport channel. By adding a bias potential along the direction of the line defects, we calculate the electric conductivity of bilayer graphene with line defects using Landauer-Büttiker theory, and show that the channel affects the electric conductivity remarkably by comparing the results with those in a perfect bilayer graphene. This one-dimension…
This article reviews the theoretical and experimental work related to the electronic properties of bilayer graphene systems. Three types of bilayer stackings are discussed: the AA, AB, and twisted bilayer graphene. This review covers single-electron properties, effects of static electric and magnetic fields, bilayer-based mesoscopic systems, spin-orbit coupling, dc transport and optical response, as well as spontaneous symmetry violation and other interaction effects. The selection of the material aims to introduce the reader to the most commonly studied topics of theoretical and experimental …
Bilayer graphene is a recently isolated and intriguing class of many-body systems with massive chiral quasiparticles. We present theoretical results for the electronic compressibility of bilayer graphene that are based on a four-band continuum band structure model combined with a random phase approximation treatment of electronic correlations. We find that the compressibility is strongly suppressed by electron-electron interactions at low carrier densities. Correlations do not lead to any qualitative new features, but are crucially important for a quantitative understanding of this fundamental…
The intrinsic spin-orbit interactions in bilayer graphene and in graphite are studied, using a tight binding model, and an intraatomic LS coupling. The spin-orbit interactions in bilayer graphene and graphite are larger, by about one order of magnitude, than the interactions in single layer graphene, due to the mixing of pi and sigma bands by interlayer hopping. Their value is in the range 0.1 - 1K. The spin-orbit coupling opens a gap in bilayer graphene, and it also gives rise to two edge modes. The spin-orbit couplings are largest, 1-4K, in orthorhombic graphite, which does not have a center…
Charge neutral bilayer graphene has a gapped ground state as transport experiments demonstrate. One of the plausible such ground states is layered antiferromagnetic spin density wave (LAF) state, where the spins in top and bottom layers have same magnitude with opposite directions. We propose that lightly charged bilayer graphene in an electric field perpendicular to the graphene plane may be a half metal as a consequence of the inversion and particle-hole symmetry broken in the LAF state. We show this explicitly by using a mean field theory on a 2-layer Hubbard model for the bilayer graphene.
We propose a non-magnetic, pseudospin-based version of a spin valve, in which the pseudospin polarization in neighboring regions of a graphene bilayer is controlled by external gates. Numerical calculations demonstrate a large on-off ratio of such a device. This finding holds promise for the realization of pseudospintronics: a form of electronics based upon the manipulation of pseudospin analogous to the control of physical spin in spintronics applications.
We show measurements on a bilayer graphene quantum dot with an integrated charge detector. The focus lies on enabling charge detection with a 30 nm wide bilayer graphene nanoribbon located approximately 35 nm next to a bilayer graphene quantum dot with an island diameter of about 100 nm. Local resonances in the nanoribbon can be successfully used to detect individual charging events in the dot even in regimes where the quantum dot Coulomb peaks cannot be measured by conventional techniques.
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 show that in gapped bilayer graphene, quasiparticle tunneling and the corresponding Berry phase can be controlled such that it exhibits features of single layer graphene such as Klein tunneling. The Berry phase is detected by a high-quality Fabry-Pérot interferometer based on bilayer graphene. By raising the Fermi energy of the charge carriers, we find that the Berry phase can be continuously tuned from $2π$ down to $0.68π$ in gapped bilayer graphene, in contrast to the constant Berry phase of $2π$ in pristine bilayer graphene. Particularly, we observe a Berry phase of $π$, the standard val…
In this comment we show that some equations and results of the paper titled "Dielectric screening and plasmons in AA-stacked bilayer graphene" are not correct. Furthermore, we present our results which seems to be more correct.
We report experimental signatures of plasmonic effects due to electron tunneling between adjacent graphene layers. At sub-nanometer separation, such layers can form either a strongly coupled bilayer graphene with a Bernal stacking or a weakly coupled double-layer graphene with a random stacking order. Effects due to interlayer tunneling dominate in the former case but are negligible in the latter. We found through infrared nano-imaging that bilayer graphene supports plasmons with a higher degree of confinement compared to single- and double-layer graphene, a direct consequence of interlayer tu…
We consider bilayer graphene in the presence of spin orbit coupling, to assess its behavior as a topological insulator. The first Chern number $n$ for the energy bands of single and bilayer graphene is computed and compared. It is shown that for a given valley and spin, $n$ in a bilayer is doubled with respect to the monolayer. This implies that bilayer graphene will have twice as many edge states as single layer graphene, which we confirm with numerical calculations and analytically in the case of an armchair terminated surface. Bilayer graphene is a weak topological insulator, whose surface …
Electron transport in bilayer graphene is studied by using a first principles analysis and theMonte Carlo simulation under conditions relevant to potential applications. While the intrinsic properties are found to be much less desirable in bilayer than in monolayer graphene, with significantly reduced mobilities and saturation velocities, the calculation also reveals the dominant influence of extrinsic factors such as the substrate and impurities. Accordingly, the difference between two graphene forms are more muted in realistic settings although the velocity-field characteristics remain subst…
We present a study of the nonlinear optical response of twisted bilayer graphene. We discuss the contribution of the Berry phase to the non-linearity when inversion symmetry is broken, thus underlining the interplay between band and real space geometry, and nonlinear response. We also highlight an effect which is characteristic of extreme nonlinear optics: the generation of harmonics in disguise. This effect emerges in twisted bilayer graphene at relatively moderate fields strengths because of the much reduced band width. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the link between geometr…
The electron transmission between monolayer and bilayer graphene is theoretically studied for zigzag and armchair boundaries within an effective-mass scheme. Due to the presence of an evanescent wave in the bilayer graphene, traveling modes are well connected to each other. The transmission through the boundary is strongly dependent on the incident angle and the dependence is opposite between the K and K' points, leading to valley polarization of transmitted wave.
We study a family of globally smooth spatially varying two dimensional stacking textures in bilayer graphene. We find that the strain-minimizing stacking patterns connecting inequivalent ground states with local $AB$ and $BA$ interlayer registries are two dimensional twisted textures of an interlayer displacement field. We construct and display these topological stacking textures for bilayer graphene, examine their interactions and develop the composition rules that allow us to represent other more complex stacking textures, including globally twisted graphenes and extended one dimensional dom…
Bilayer graphene has the very interesting property of an energy gap tunable with the vertical electric field. We propose an analytical model for a bilayer-graphene field-effect transistor, suitable for exploring the design parameter space and to find a device structure with promising performance in terms of transistor operation. Our model, based on the effective mass approximation and ballistic transport assumptions, takes into account bilayer-graphene tunable gap and self polarization, and includes all band-to-band tunneling current components, which are shown to represent the major limitatio…
We study the conductance of a biased bilayer graphene flake with monolayer nanoribbon contacts. We find that the transmission through the bilayer ribbon strongly depends on the applied bias between the two layers and on the relative position of the monolayer contacts. Besides the opening of an energy gap on the bilayer, the bias allows to tune the electronic density on the bilayer flake, making possible the control of the electronic transmission by an external parameter.
Here we show that the Pfaffian state proposed for the $\frac52$ fractional quantum Hall states in conventional two-dimensional electron systems can be readily realized in a bilayer graphene at one of the Landau levels. The properties and stability of the Pfaffian state at this special Landau level strongly depend on the magnetic field strength. The graphene system shows a transition from the incompressible to a compressible state with increasing magnetic field. At a finite magnetic field of ~10 Tesla, the Pfaffian state in bilayer graphene becomes more stable than its counterpart in convention…
Magnetic impurity adsorbed on one of the carbon planes of a bilayer graphene is studied. The formation of the many-body SU(2) and SU(4) resonances close to the bandgap is analyzed within the mean field Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave boson approach. Impact of enhanced hybridization and magnetic instability of bilayer doped near the Van Hove singularity on the screening of magnetic moment is discussed.
We present an analytical description of pi electrons of a finite size bilayer graphene within a framework of the tight-binding model. The bilayered structures considered here are characterized by a rectangular geometry and have a finite size in one or both directions with armchair- and zigzag-shaped edges. We provide an exact analytical description of the spectrum of pi electrons in the zigzag and armchair bilayer graphene nanoribbons and nanotubes. We analyze the dispersion relations, the density of states, and the conductance quantization.
We study the electronic properties of commensurate faulted bilayer graphene by diagonalizing the one-particle Hamiltonian of the bilayer system in a complete basis of Bloch states of the individual graphene layers. Our novel approach is very general and can be easily extended to any commensurate graphene-based heterostructure. Here, we consider three cases: i) twisted bilayer graphene, ii) bilayer graphene where triaxial stress is applied to one layer, and iii) bilayer graphene where uniaxial stress is applied to one layer. We show that the resulting superstructures can be divided into distinc…
We show that the twisted graphene bilayer can reveal unusual topological properties at low energies, as a consequence of a Dirac-point splitting. These features rely on a symmetry analysis of the electron hopping between the two layers of graphene and we derive a simplified effective low-energy Hamiltonian which captures the essential topological properties of twisted bilayer graphene. The corresponding Landau levels peculiarly reveal a degenerate zero-energy mode which cannot be lifted by strong magnetic fields.
We investigate the transport properties of double-gated bilayer graphene nanoribbons at room temperature. The devices were fabricated using conventional CMOS-compatible processes. By analyzing the dependence of the resistance at the charge neutrality point as a function of the electric field applied perpendicular to the graphene surface, we show that a band gap in the density of states opens, reaching an effective value of ~sim50 meV. This demonstrates the potential of bilayer graphene as FET channel material in a conventional CMOS environment.
We calculate the density-density response function and electron self-energy for undoped bilayer graphene, within the Random Phase Approximation (RPA). We show that the quasiparticle decay rate scales linearly with the quasiparticle energy, and quasiparticle weight vanishes logarithmically in the low-energy limit, indicating non-Fermi liquid behavior. This is a consequence of the absence of a Fermi surface for neutral bilayer graphene and corresponding larger phase space available for scattering processes. Experimental consequences of our results as well as their differences from those of singl…
We introduce a minimum tight-binding model with only three parameters extracted from graphene and untwisted bilayer graphene. This model reproduces quantitatively the electronic structure of not only these two systems and bulk graphite near the Fermi level, but also that of twisted bilayer graphene including the value of the magic angle, at which bands at $E_F$ flatten without overlap and two gaps open, one above and one below $E_F$. The Hamiltonian is sufficiently transparent and flexible to be adopted to other twisted layered systems.
We study the superlattice minibands produced by the interplay between moiré pattern induced by hexagonal BN substrate on graphene layer and the interlayer coupling in bilayer graphene with Bernal stacking (BLG). We compare moiré miniband features in BLG, where they are affected by the interlayer asymmetry of BLG-hBN heterostructure and trigonal warping characteristic for electrons in Bernal-stacked bilayers with those found in monolayer graphene.
Closed expressions for the Green functions of the stationary two-dimensional two-component Schrodinger equation for an electron moving in monolayer and bilayer graphene in the presence of a magnetic field are obtained in terms of the Whittaker functions.
The relativistic-like behavior of electrons in graphene significantly influences the interaction properties of these electrons in a quantizing magnetic field, resulting in more stable fractional quantum Hall effect states as compared to those in conventional (non-relativistic) semiconductor systems. In bilayer graphene the interaction strength can be controlled by a bias voltage and by the orientation of the magnetic field. The finite bias voltage between the graphene monolayers can in fact, enhance the interaction strength in a given Landau level. As a function of the bias voltage, a graphene…
Near a magic twist angle, bilayer graphene transforms from a weakly correlated Fermi liquid to a strongly correlated two-dimensional electron system with properties that are extraordinarily sensitive to carrier density and to controllable environmental factors such as the proximity of nearby gates and twist-angle variation. Among other phenomena magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene hosts superconductivity, interaction induced insulating states, magnetism, electronic nematicity, linear-in-T low-temperature resistivity, and quantized anomalous Hall states. We highlight some key research results …
Employing graphene as a template, we fabricate moiré superlattices by stacking bilayer or folded bilayer-bilayer graphene (BLG or fBBLG) and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), i.e., hBN/BLG/hBN or hBN/fBBLG/hBN stacks, with a small twist angle between the graphene and one of the two hBN layers. Because of the modulation due to the hBN, higher-generation Dirac points can emerge with a narrow bandwidth and van Hove singularities. In the moiré superlattice devices, we can therefore access the higher-generation Dirac points by in-situ gate tuning. This study is based on our previous paper (Appl. Phys.…
Thermoelectric power (TEP) is measured in bilayer graphene for various temperatures and charge-carrier densities. At low temperatures, measured TEP well follows the semiclassical Mott formula with a hyperbolic dispersion relation. TEP for a high carrier density shows a linear temperature dependence, which demonstrates a weak electron-phonon interaction in the bilayer graphene. For a low carrier density, a deviation from the Mott relation is observed at high temperatures and is attributed to the low Fermi temperature in the bilayer graphene. Oscillating TEP and the Nernst effect for varying car…
Electron transport in bilayer graphene placed under a perpendicular electric field is revealed experimentally. Steep increase of the resistance is observed under high electric field; however, the resistance does not diverge even at low temperatures. The observed temperature dependence of the conductance consists of two contributions: the thermally activated (TA) conduction and the variable range hopping (VRH) conduction. We find that for the measured electric field range (0 - 1.3 V/nm) the mobility gap extracted from the TA behavior agrees well with the theoretical prediction for the band gap …
