Effect of band-gap tuning on absorption of phonons and acoustoelectric current in graphene nanoribbon

We report the use of Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE) in the hypersound regime for investigating the gen-eration of acoustoelectric (AE) current in an armchair graphene nanoribbon (AGNR). The AE current obtained was deduced from the absorption due to the Landau damping of quantized sound waves (LD-QSW) energy. By stimulating the AGNR with a non-quantized electric field, the absorption and the AE current were analysed against the frequency, the wavenumber, the width of the bandgap and the drift velocity. The absorption was observed to switch to amplification as the drift velocity was varied. At high drift velocities, the amplitude of the AE current decreases as the band-gap (that depends on the applied electric field) was increased, suggesting a potential use of AGNR in the design of tunable acoustoelectric current devices.

Automated summary

In this study, the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE) was used in the hypersound regime to investigate the generation of acoustoelectric (AE) current in an armchair graphene nanoribbon (AGNR). The AE current was deduced from the absorption of quantized sound waves (LD-QSW) energy. By analyzing the absorption and AE current with respect to frequency, wavenumber, bandgap width, and drift velocity, it was found that the absorption switched to amplification as the drift velocity varied. At high drift velocities, the amplitude of the AE current decreased as the bandgap increased, suggesting a potential use of AGNR in tunable acoustoelectric current device design.