Comparison of the electronic transport properties of metallic graphene and silicene nanoribbons

Carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons are investigated extensively for the near future nanoelectronics technology. Considering the expertise on the processing of silicon, various implementations of silicon counterparts of these nanoscale components such as silicon nanotubes and silicene nanoribbons have also been reported recently. In this work, electronic transport properties of metallic graphene and silicene nanoribbons (GNRs and SiNRs) are compared. Ab initio simulations based on density functional theory combined with non-equilibrium Green's function formalism are used to obtain the voltage-dependent transmission spectra, resistance-voltage variations and the potential profiles of realistic metallic GNR and SiNR samples. The investigation of the variations of the transmission characteristics of the GNRs and SiNRs exposes that both nano structures show voltage-dependent resistances due to elastic potential scattering compliant with Buttiker formalism. However, the variation of the transmission spectra of GNRs by the applied voltage is lower than that of SiNRs indicating that metallic GNRs seem to be better candidates compared to their silicon counterparts for use as metallic interconnects.