Modeling of Tunable Electronic Waveguide Devices in Graphene Using Conservative Higher Order Time Stepping

Abstract

An accurate technique leveraging conservative higher order time stepping is proposed to analyze electrostatically induced waveguides in graphene. These highly tunable 1-D electronic channels are a promising interconnect alternative for graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to be used in future integrated circuits (ICs). A detailed discussion of the eigenmodes of these waveguides is presented and specific attention is paid to the orthogonality relationships, which are remarkably similar to their electromagnetic counterpart. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the addition of a vector potential does not affect the long-term properties of the time stepping scheme. To showcase the accuracy and applicability of the constructed technique, two practical electronic waveguide devices are simulated: a dot resonator and a 50/50 splitter containing no bends. The dot resonator exhibits frequency-selective behavior that proves to be tunable by both the scalar and vector potentials, while the desired output characteristic is obtained for the splitter after carefully tuning the confining potentials.