Transport properties of AA-stacking bilayer graphene nanoribbons

The transport properties of AA-stacking bilayer graphene nanoribbons (GNs) have been explored by using the nonequilibrium Green's function method and the Landauer–Büttiker formalism. It is found that in the case of zero bias, the interlayer coupling has pronounced effects on the conductance of bilayer GNs. The zigzag bilayer GNs remain metallic, but metallic armchair bilayer GNs will be semiconductor as the strength of interlayer coupling exceeds critical value. The first Van Hove singularities move close to the Dirac point for both armchair and zigzag bilayer GNs with the strength of interlayer coupling increasing. Some prominent conductance peaks around the Fermi energy are observed in zigzag bilayer GNs, when the top layer and bottom layer have different widths. In the presence of bias voltage, the I–V curves show that for armchair bilayer GNs, the interlayer interactions suppress current, while the interlayer interactions have almost no effect on the current for zigzag bilayer GNs. The ripples in bilayer GNs suppress electronic transport, especially for zigzag bilayer GNs.

► The bilayer GNs can be either metallic or semiconducting. ► The interlayer interactions suppress current for armchair bilayer GNs. ► The ripples in bilayer GNs suppress electronic transport for zigzag bilayer GNs.