UCLA

Motivated by the rising of the carbon electronics and the potential applications of bilayer graphene nanoribbons in both electronics and optics, this thesis focuses on the fundamental transport properties of bilayer graphene nanoribbons. Two types of devices were fabricated from mechanically exfoliated bilayer graphene films, by using nanowires masks and the oxygen plasma etching process. In the back-gated devices, transport gaps and Coulomb blockade effect indicate that the disorder-induced potential landscape creates quantum dots along the nanoribbons and governs the transport property. In the dual-gated devices, the effects of the perpendicular electric field leads to the evolution of the transport gap size and the oscillation strength. The interaction between the potential landscape and the field-induced gap is proposed to explain the observed transport behavior. Our study reveals the dominant factors in the bilayer graphene nanoribbon transport under different conditions. The physical understanding presented here points out the possible routes towards future applications.