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Very large magnetoresistance in graphene nanoribbons

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 655–659 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Graphene has unique electronic properties1,2, and graphene nanoribbons are of particular interest because they exhibit a conduction bandgap that arises due to size confinement and edge effects3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. Theoretical studies have suggested that graphene nanoribbons could have interesting magneto-electronic properties, with a very large predicted magnetoresistance4,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20. Here, we report the experimental observation of a significant enhancement in the conductance of a graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistor by a perpendicular magnetic field. A negative magnetoresistance of nearly 100% was observed at low temperatures, with over 50% magnetoresistance remaining at room temperature. This magnetoresistance can be tuned by varying the gate or source–drain bias. We also find that the charge transport in the nanoribbons is not significantly modified by an in-plane magnetic field. The large observed values of magnetoresistance may be attributed to the reduction of quantum confinement through the formation of cyclotron orbits and the delocalization effect under the perpendicular magnetic field15,16,17,18,19,20.

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Figure 1: Schematic of fabrication of a graphene nanoribbon FET using a nanowire as a physical etching mask.
Figure 2: Electrical transport measurements of a graphene nanoribbon FET with a channel width of ∼15 nm and length of 800 nm.
Figure 3: Tunable magnetoresistance in a graphene nanoribbon FET device.
Figure 4: Temperature-dependent magneto-transport properties.
Figure 5: Magneto-transport properties of a short-channel graphene nanoribbon FET device with a width of 37 nm and length of 200 nm.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge technical support from the Center for Quantum Research and the Nanoelectronics Research Facility at UCLA. The authors thank D. Newhauser and Y. Tserkovnyak for discussions. Y.H. acknowledges support from the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and an Applied Science Fellowship. X.D. acknowledges support from NSF CAREER award 0956171 and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award Program, part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, through grant no. 1DP2OD004342-01.

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  1. Jingwei Bai and Rui Cheng: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Jingwei Bai, Rui Cheng & Yu Huang

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Faxian Xiu, Minsheng Wang & Kang L. Wang

  3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Lei Liao & Xiangfeng Duan

  4. California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Alexandros Shailos, Kang L. Wang, Yu Huang & Xiangfeng Duan

Authors
  1. Jingwei Bai
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  3. Faxian Xiu
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  5. Minsheng Wang
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Contributions

X.D., Y.H., J.B., R.C. and L.L. conceived and designed the experiments. J.B., C.R., F.X. and A.S. performed the experiments. J.B. and C.R. collected and analysed the data. M.W., A.S. and K.W. contributed experimental tools. J.B., C.R., Y.H. and X.D. co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yu Huang or Xiangfeng Duan.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bai, J., Cheng, R., Xiu, F. et al. Very large magnetoresistance in graphene nanoribbons. Nature Nanotech 5, 655–659 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.154

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