Uniaxial Strain Effects on Graphene Nanoribbon Resonant Tunneling Transistors

Abstract: The effect of the uniaxial strain on the current-voltage characteristic of a typical armchair graphene-nanoribbon-hBN heterostructure device is simulated numerically by employing the nearest-neighbor tight-binding model and the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism. Simulations clearly reveal the following notable dependencies: (i) the strain invariably reduces the current; (ii) the strain applied in the armchair direction markedly widens the main peak of the current over a larger region of the bias voltage compared with the unstrained state; (iii) the current decreases faster when the strain is applied in the armchair rather than the zigzag direction.