Line-defect-induced Fano interference in an armchair graphene nanoribbon

Electron transport through a metallic armchair graphene nanoribbon is theoretically investigated by considering the presence of line defect. The line defect is formed by the staggered stacking of the pentagons and heptagons. Our calculation results show that the line defect mainly destroys the electron transport in the conduction-band region by inducing the abundant Fano effects in the electron transport process. Moreover, the properties of the Fano effects are tightly dependent on the width M of the nanoribbon, and the results of M <= 17 are completely different from those of M > 17. The spectra of the density of electron states illustrate that the line defect induces some localized quantum states, and that the different localizations of these states lead to the distinct transport results. By analyzing the influence of the structure parameters, the Fano effects are described in detail. All the results demonstrate that such a structure can be a promising candidate for electron manipulation in graphene nanoribbon. Copyright (c) EPLA, 2013