Electronic Transport in Disordered Bilayer and Trilayer Graphene

Shengjun Yuan, Hans De Raedt, Mikhail I. Katsnelson

Published 2010-10-14, updated 2010-12-31Version 2

We present a detailed numerical study of the electronic transport properties of bilayer and trilayer graphene within a framework of single-electron tight-binding model. Various types of disorder are considered, such as resonant (hydrogen) impurities, vacancies, short- or long-range Gaussian random potentials, and Gaussian random nearest neighbor hopping. The algorithms are based on the numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr \"{o}dinger equation and applied to calculate the density of states and conductivities (via the Kubo formula) of large samples containing millions of atoms. In the cases under consideration, far enough from the neutrality point, depending on the strength of disorders and the stacking sequence, a linear or sublinear electron-density dependent conductivity is found. The minimum conductivity $\sigma_{\min}\approx 2e^{2}/h$ (per layer) at the charge neutrality point is the same for bilayer and trilayer graphene, independent of the type of the impurities, but the plateau of minimum conductivity around the neutrality point is only observed in the presence of resonant impurities or vacancies, originating from the formation of the impurity band.