石墨烯p-n结在磁场中的电输运热耗散

Thermal dissipation of electric transport in graphene p-n junctions in magnetic field

石墨烯是一种特殊的二维材料,其独特的能带结构允许人们通过电场来调控其载流子的类型和浓度,因此,在构建双极型纳米电子器件方面具有潜在应用前景.本文基于紧束缚格点模型,利用非平衡格林函数方法及Landauer-Büttiker公式,研究了石墨烯p-n结在磁场中的电输运热耗散问题.在强磁场作用下,结的两边均处于量子霍尔相,存在拓扑保护的手性边缘态.直觉上,这种拓扑保护的手性边缘态应当是无热耗散的.但本文研究发现,当有耗散源时,尽管手性边缘态受到拓扑保护,热耗散却依然可以发生.对于完美的石墨烯,单极结输运时热耗散发生在体系边缘;偶极结输运时在体系边缘和结的界面处均可以发生热耗散.当无序存在时,无论单极结还是偶极结,无序均能增强热耗散.此外,本文还研究了不同位置处的电子能量分布,发现热耗散是否发生只取决于电子是否处于非平衡分布.这些结果表明拓扑只能保护电子的传播方向,却不能禁止热耗散的发生.

Graphene, a special two-dimensional material, has a unique band structure that allows the type and concentration of carriers to be controlled through a gate voltage, and it has potential applications in bipolar nanoelectronic devices. In this paper, based on the tight-binding model of graphene p-n junctions, by using the nonequilibrium Green’ s function method and Landauer-Büttiker formula, the thermal dissipation of electric transport in graphene p-n junctions in a magnetic field is investigated. Under a strong magnetic field, both sides of the junction are in the quantum Hall regime, thus the topologically protected chiral edge states appear.Intuitively, the topologically protected chiral edge states are dissipationless. However, the results show that thermal dissipation can occur in the quantum Hall regime in graphene junctions in the presence of dissipation sources, although the topologically protected chiral edge states still exist. In clean graphene junctions, thermal dissipation occurs mainly at the edge for the unipolar transport, but it occurs both at the edge and at the interface of the junctions for the bipolar transport. In the presence of disorder, thermal dissipation is significantly enhanced both in the unipolar junction and in the bipolar junction, and it increases with disorder strength increasing. Besides, the energy distribution of electrons at different positions is also studied, which shows that the thermal dissipation always occurs as long as the energy distribution is in nonequilibrium. This indicates that the topology can protect only the propagation direction of electrons, but it can not suppress the occurrence of thermal dissipation.