Published in J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 32, 04E101 (2014).

Theory of Graphene-Insulator-Graphene Tunnel Junctions

S. C. de la Barrera, Qin Gao, and R. M. Feenstra
Dept. Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Abstract

Graphene-insulator-graphene vertical tunneling structures are discussed from a theoretical perspective. Momentum conservation in such devices leads to highly nonlinear current-voltage characteristics, which with gates on the tunnel junction form potentially useful transistor structures. Two prior theoretical treatments of such devices are discussed; the treatments are shown to be formally equivalent, although some differences in their implementations are identified. The limit of zero momentum conservation in the theory is explicitly considered, with a formula involving the density-of-states of the graphene electrodes recovered in this limit. Various predictions of the theory are compared to experiment.

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