Electron transmission through a stacking domain boundary in multilayer graphene

We present a theoretical study of the electron transmission through the AB-BA stacking boundary in multilayer graphenes. Using the tight-binding model and the transfer matrix method, we calculate the electron transmission probability through the boundary as a function of electron Fermi energy in multilayers from bilayer to five-layer. We find that the transmission is strongly suppressed particularly near the band touching point, suggesting that the electronic conductivity in general multilayer graphenes is significantly interfered with by stacking fault. The conductivity suppression by stacking fault is the strongest in the bilayer graphene, while it is gradually relaxed as the number of layers increases. At a large carrier density, we observe an even-odd effect where the transmission is relatively lower in trilayer and five-layer than in bilayer and four-layer, and this is related to the existence of a monolayerlike linear band in odd layers. For bilayer graphene, we also study the effect of the perpendicular electric field opening an energy gap, and show that the band deformation enhances the electron transmission at a fixed carrier density.