Electronic transport in graphene with out-of-plane disorder

Real-world samples of graphene often exhibit various types of out-of-plane disorder—ripples, wrinkles and folds—introduced at the stage of growth and transfer processes. These complex out-of-plane defects resulting from the interplay between self-adhesion of graphene and its bending rigidity inevitably lead to the scattering of charge carriers thus affecting the electronic transport properties of graphene. We address the ballistic charge-carrier transmission across the models of out-of-plane defects using tight-binding and density functional calculations while fully taking into account lattice relaxation effects. The observed transmission oscillations in commensurate graphene wrinkles are attributed to the interference between intra- and interlayer transport channels, while the incommensurate wrinkles show vanishing backscattering and retain the transport properties of flat graphene. The suppression of backscattering reveals the crucial role of lattice commensuration in the electronic transmission. Our results provide guidelines to controlling the transport properties of graphene in presence of this ubiquitous type of disorder.

Yifei Guan, Oleg V. Yazyev