Scaling Effect of Phosphorene Nanoribbon - Uncovering the Origin of Asymmetric Current Transport

In this paper, phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) are theoretically studied using a multiscale simulation flow from the ab initio level to the tight binding (TB) level. The scaling effects of both armchair PNRs (aPNRs) and zigzag PNRs (zPNRs) from material properties to device properties are explored. The much larger effective mass of holes compared to that of electrons in zPNR is responsible for its asymmetric transport. However, in aPNR, not only the effective mass difference but also the non-equal density of state (DOS) distributions near valence band maximum (VBM) and conduction band minimum (CBM) lead to the asymmetric transport. This non-equal distribution phenomenon is caused by energy band degeneracies near the VBM. Based on these two different mechanisms, PNRs’ asymmetric transport characteristics at the device level are explained, and it is shown that this behaviour can be ameliorated well by reducing the ribbon width in an aPNR MOSFET. Calculation results also indicate that aPNR’s effective mass is comparable to that of a graphene nanoribbon (GNR) at the same bandgap; however, aPNR’s band gap variation is more stable and regular than that of GNR, making it a good candidate for use in low-dimensional nano devices.