Strain-induced negative differential resistance in armchair-edge graphene nanoribbons

The transport properties of graphene strips under tensile strain have been theoretically investigated. For the armchair-edge graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with width N=3m-1, the additional negative differential resistance (NDR) undergoes a process from occurring to enhancement and then disappearance with increasing tensile strain. The changes in the additional NDR may be originated from the suppression of strain-mediated channel states for the variations in degenerate energy bands near Fermi level. The strain-induced NDR behaviors of the GNRs present the possibility of the potential applications in electromechanical nanodevices such as stress-controlled Goto pair for digital signal restoration.