Resonant tunneling and intrinsic bistability in twisted graphene structures

We predict that vertical transport in heterostructures formed by twisted graphene layers can exhibit a unique bistability mechanism. Intrinsically bistable I-V characteristics arise from resonant tunneling and interlayer charge coupling, enabling multiple stable states in the sequential tunneling re...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rodriguez Nieva, Joaquin Francisco, Dresselhaus, Mildred, Levitov, Leonid
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2016
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103975
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4268-731X
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8492-2261
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3023-396X
Description
Summary:We predict that vertical transport in heterostructures formed by twisted graphene layers can exhibit a unique bistability mechanism. Intrinsically bistable I-V characteristics arise from resonant tunneling and interlayer charge coupling, enabling multiple stable states in the sequential tunneling regime. We consider a simple trilayer architecture, with the outer layers acting as the source and drain and the middle layer floating. Under bias, the middle layer can be either resonant or nonresonant with the source and drain layers. The bistability is controlled by geometric device parameters easily tunable in experiments. The nanoscale architecture can enable uniquely fast switching times.