Charge transport through graphene junctions with wetting metal leads

Abstract

Graphene is believed to be an excellent candidate material for next-generation electronic devices. However, one needs to take into account the nontrivial effect of metal contacts in order to precisely control the charge injection and extraction processes. We have performed transport calculations for graphene junctions with wetting metal leads (metal leads that bind covalently to graphene) using nonequilibrium Green's functions and density functional theory. Quantitative information is provided on the increased resistance with respect to ideal contacts and on the statistics of current fluctuations. We find that charge transport through the studied two-terminal graphene junction with Ti contacts is pseudo-diffusive up to surprisingly high energies.