Charge transport in germanium doped phosphorene nanoribbons

Abstract

New two dimensional structures containing phosphorus and germanium atoms are introduced for nanoelectronic applications. Under various bias voltages, electronic transport in the systems has been studied with the non-equilibrium Green’s function formalism. I–V characteristics have been extracted. The density of states (DOS) and transmission spectra, T(E,V_bias), have been investigated and it was shown that charge transport occurs when the bias voltage reaches about 1 V. The negative differential resistance (NDR) appears in zigzag phosphorene nanoribbons (zPNRs) while it is completely suppressed after replacing edge phosphorus atoms with germanium ones. The calculated molecular projected self-consistent Hamiltonian (MPSH) shows that the spatial distribution of orbital levels has been affected by the electrodes. The studied structures have a band-gap of about 0.7 eV which absorbs light in the visible range and thus these structures could be interesting contenders for solar cells applications.