Electronic transport properties of metallic graphene nanoribbons with two vacancies

We studied theoretically the electronic transport of metallic graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with two vacancies using the tight-binding model and Green's function method. The results show that the conductance of zigzag GNR (ZGNR) varies with the relative position of two vacancies. However, when two vacancies reside on the edges, the conductance remain unchanged compared to that of perfect GNRs due to the interaction between vacancy state and edge state. Moreover, the conductance at the Fermi level for armchair GNR (AGNR) can be zero or finite depending on the position of vacancies on the GNRs. The demonstrated features of electronic transport open extremely attractive perspectives for designing well-defined GNR-based nanoelectronic devices. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.