Armchair Graphene Nanoribbon Gate-Controllable RTD With Boron Nitride Barriers

Resonant-tunneling diodes (RTDs) based on graphene nanoribbons have attracted the attention of many researchers recently. In this article, we propose a new RTD based on graphene nanoribbon/h-boron nitride. In this structure, two hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) slices are used as potential barriers to form a double-barrier structure, due to the higher bandgap of h-BN. Two gate electrodes are used in order to control the peak-to-valley current ratio (PVR). In the proposed structure, a PVR of 1.11 at a valley current of
$5.56~\mu \text{A}$
and a PVR of 2.41 at a valley current of
$0.49~\mu \text{A}$
have been obtained that are better than many reported structures in the literature. The proposed structure is a suitable candidate for use in various high current RTD-based applications. A numerical tight-binding model coupled with nonequilibrium Green’s function formalism is used for simulation and studying electronic properties of this structure.