Designing Interconnects Based on Graphene Nanoribbon Junctions

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have emerged as potential building blocks for next-generation electronic devices, including the realization of all-graphene nanoscale electrical circuits. Junctions connecting two or more GNRs are hence inevitable in the interconnects of such circuits. We systematically address the electronic transport properties of 60° and 120° angled junctions connecting a pair of GNR leads of identical width and chirality that can be produced by means of the bottom-up synthesis. By using the tight-binding model calculations, we perform an exhaustive exploration of over 400,000 distinct configurations of GNR junctions, which allows us to formulate general guidelines into engineering the transport properties of GNR circuits and identify a large number of junctions that have conductance close to the limit defined by the ballistic conductance of ideal GNR leads. For instance, we find that sublattice imbalance in 120° junctions can support perfect transmission via a resonant state occurring at zero energy, hence yielding an ideal interconnect. To further streamline the process of engineering GNR junctions we also designed an intuitive online application for modeling and calculation of their electronic transport properties.