Tuning graphene properties by shear

Graphene being the thinnest possible membrane made out of carbon atoms is prone to deformations under slight external forcing. Here, we take advantage of this proneness to deformations to manipulate transport properties of graphene ribbons. We analyze the effect on conductance and LDOS of the spontaneous pattern produced when a wide ribbon is subject to shear. The deformation of the ribbon produces pseudo-magnetic fields, scalar potentials, and Fermi velocity renormalization resulting in the modification of transmission properties without the need of an external gate potential. Our proposal paves the way for producing electronic waveguides by using an elastic instability that spans from the nano to macro-scales.