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

Minimalist design of a robust real-time quantum random number generator

We present a simple and robust construction of a real-time quantum random number generator (QRNG). Our minimalist approach ensures stable operation of the device as well as its simple and straightforward hardware implementation as a stand-alone module. As a source of randomness the device uses measurements of time intervals between clicks of a single-photon detector. The obtained raw sequence is then filtered and processed by a deterministic randomness extractor, which is realized as a look-up table. This enables high speed on-the-fly processing without the need of extensive computations. The overall performance of the device is around 1 random bit per detector click, resulting in 1.2 Mbit/s generation rate in our implementation

Tailoring electronic properties of multilayer phosphorene by siliconization

Controlling a thickness dependence of electronic properties for two-dimensional (2d) materials is among primary goals for their large-scale applications. Herein, employing a first-principles computational approach, we predict that Si interaction with multilayer phosphorene (2d-P) can result in the formation of highly stable 2d-SiP and 2d-SiP$_2$ compounds with a weak interlayer interaction. Our analysis demonstrates that these systems are semiconductors with band gap energies that can be governed by varying the thickness and stacking order. Specifically, siliconization of phosphorene allows to design 2d-SiP$_x$ materials with significantly weaker thickness dependence of electronic properties than that in 2d-P and to develop ways for their tailoring. We also reveal the spatial dependence of electronic properties for 2d-SiP$_x$ highlighting difference in effective band gaps for different layers. Particularly, our results show that central layers in the multilayer 2d systems determine overall electronic properties, while the role of the outermost layers is noticeably smaller