Conductivity of epitaxial and CVD graphene with correlated line defects

Transport properties of single-layer graphene with correlated one-dimensional defects are studied using the time-dependent real-space Kubo-Greenwood formalism. Such defects are present in epitaxial graphene, comprising atomic terraces and steps due to the substrate morphology, and in polycrystalline chemically-vapor-deposited (CVD) graphene due to the grain boundaries, composed of a periodic array of dislocations, or quasi-periodic nanoripples originated from the metal substrate. The extended line defects are described by the long-range Lorentzian-type scattering potential. The dc conductivity is calculated numerically for different cases of distribution of line defects. This includes a random (uncorrelated) and a correlated distribution with a prevailing direction in the orientation of lines. The anisotropy of the conductivity along and across the line defects is revealed, which agrees with experimental measurements for epitaxial graphene grown on SiC. We performed a detailed study of the conductivity for different defect correlations, introducing the correlation angle alpha_max (i.e. the maximum possible angle between any two lines). We find that for a given electron density, the relative enhancement of the conductivity for the case of fully correlated line defects in comparison to the case of uncorrelated ones is larger for a higher defect density. Finally, we study the conductivity of realistic samples where both extended line defects as well as point-like scatterers such as adatoms and charged impurities are presented.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Influence of correlated impurities on conductivity of graphene sheets: Time-dependent real-space Kubo approach

Exact numerical calculations of the conductivity of graphene sheets with random and correlated distributions of disorders have been performed using the time-dependent real-space Kubo formalism. The disorder was modeled by the long-range Gaussian potential describing screened charged impurities and by the short-range potential describing neutral adatoms both in the weak and strong scattering regime. Our central result is that correlation in the spatial distribution for the strong short-range scatterers and for the long-range Gaussian potential do not lead to any enhancement of the conductivity in comparison to the uncorrelated case. Our results strongly indicate that the temperature enhancement of the conductivity reported in the recent study (Yan and Fuhrer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 206601 (2011)) and attributed to the effect of dopant correlations was most likely caused by other factors not related to the correlations in the scattering potential.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure