Rectification, transport properties of doped defective graphene nanoribbon junctions

Abstract The transport properties and rectification behavior of junctions which contain armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) with double vacancy defects or nitrogen-doped in three different sizes of 9, 10 and 12 atoms are studied. The non-equilibrium Green function method and density functional based tight-binding approach are used for different computations. The double vacancy (DV) defects are along the direction of current pathways of graphene devices. We calculated transmission probability, density of states, the current–voltage curves, rectification ratio, and electrodes band structures. We found that I–V graph has nonlinear characteristic and displays rectification behavior. Devices which posses the size of 9 atoms show significant sign of rectification in contrast to other cases (10, 12 atoms). But the current value is more important for the device of 12 atoms size. Moreover, it is shown that extra energy bands are created by the DV defects and nitrogen (N) doped atoms. These bands of DV defects and N-doped cause the Fermi level to shift upwards and can change the behavior (n-type semiconductor, or metal-like) of devices of 9, 10 and 12 AGNRs. Also, various orbital distributions of MPSH (molecularly projected self-consistent Hamiltonian) states in the DV-9AGNR device are investigated.