Focusing of electron flow in a bipolar graphene ribbon with different chiralities

Abstract

The focusing of electron flow in a symmetric p-n junction (PNJ) of graphene ribbon with different chiralities is studied. Considering the PNJ with the sharp interface, in a armchair ribbon, the electron flow emitting from (−L,0) in n region can always be focused perfectly at (L,0) in p region in the whole Dirac fermion regime, i.e., in whole regime E0<t, where E0 is the distance between Dirac-point energy and Fermi energy and t is the nearest hopping energy. For the bipolar ribbon with zigzag edge, however, the incoming electron flow in n region is perfectly converged in p region only in a very low energy regime with E0<0.05t. Moreover, for a smooth PNJ, electrons are backscattered near PNJ, which weakens the focusing effect. But the focusing pattern still remains the same as that of the sharp PNJ. In addition, quantum oscillation in charge density occurs due to the interference between forward and backward scatterings. Finally, in the presence of weak perpendicular magnetic field, charge carriers are deflected in opposite directions in the p region and n region. As a result, the focusing effect is smeared. The lower the energy E0, the easier the focusing effect is destroyed. For the high-energy E0 (e.g., E0=0.9t), however, the focusing effect can still survive in a moderate magnetic field on order of 1 T.