Electron Transport Properties of Graphene-Based Quantum Wires

We study the electronic transport in quantum wire structures made of graphene. By using the nonequilibrium Green function method, the transmission is studied for varies sizes samples. Our results show that the transmission sensitive depends on the size of the system and exhibits fluctuations due to the mismating of propagating modes between the central region and the leads. The number of resonant transmission peaks increases with the increase of length of the wire, while the width of the leads mainly affect the transmission in the region of low energy. A central energy gap in the transmission spectrum is more likely to appear in the quantum wire system than in the uniform armchair graphene nanoribbons. Moreover, the energy gap can be widened for a certain size of the quantum wire system by changing the width of the leads. These results may have potential applications in designing graphene-based devices.