Defect-based graphene nanoribbon photodetectors: A numerical study

Recently, some photodetectors based on graphene have been proposed. In all of these works, current generation was carried out by separation of photo-excited carriers using an electric field, either internal or external. In this work, a new method of producing current which is based on different transmission coefficients for electrons and holes when they travel toward any of the two contacts is proposed. To this end, a single Stone–Wales defect close to one of the two contacts was used to break the channel symmetry. In order to confirm the idea, the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism in real space in conjunction with the tight binding method was used in simulations. In addition, to clarify the results, we present a classical model in which different diffusion constants are assumed for the left going and the right going carriers. Additional simulations for different positions of the defect, different lengths of the ribbon, and different bias voltages were performed, and the results are included in this study.