Edge-Phonon Scattering Effects on Electron Transport of Graphene Nanoribbons

We study the scattering effects of various phonon modes on the transport properties of armchair graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with widths from 2 to 10 nm using the time-dependent wave-packet diffusion (TD-WPD) method. We find that there appear phonon modes localized at the edge (edge-phonon mode) of the GNRs in the low-frequency regime. By comparing the mobilities and mean free paths of the GNRs with those of the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) which have no edge-phonon modes, we find that the transport properties are not affected by the edge-phonon scatterings in a small bias voltage regime. (C) 2010 The Japan Society of Applied Physics