Metal-to-insulator transition and electron-hole puddle formation in disordered graphene nanoribbons

The experimentally observed metal-to-insulator transition in hydrogenated graphene is numerically confirmed for actual sized graphene samples and realistic impurity concentrations. The eigenstates of our tight-binding model with substitutional disorder corroborate the formation of electron-hole pudd...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2012-02, Vol.108 (6), p.066402-066402, Article 066402
Main Authors: Schubert, Gerald, Fehske, Holger
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:The experimentally observed metal-to-insulator transition in hydrogenated graphene is numerically confirmed for actual sized graphene samples and realistic impurity concentrations. The eigenstates of our tight-binding model with substitutional disorder corroborate the formation of electron-hole puddles with characteristic length scales comparable to the ones found in experiments. The puddles cause charge inhomogeneities and tend to suppress Anderson localization. Even though, monitoring the charge carrier quantum dynamics and performing a finite-size scaling of the local density of states distribution, we find strong evidence for the existence of localized states in graphene nanoribbons with short-range but also correlated long-range disorder.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.066402