Universalities of anomalous properties in electron transport through different Z-shaped phosphorene nanoribbon devices

Abstract

Aiming at improving the flexibility of designing the phosphorene-based nanodevices, we propose three kinds of Z-shaped phosphorene nanoribbons (ZPNRs), which are composed of two metallic nanoribbon electrodes and one semiconducting/metallic nanoribbon central region (CR). Many anomalous properties including the unexpected current increasing under the low bias voltage, the negative differential conductance, and the transition of the transport mechanism are found to be universal in different ZPNRs. Also, we find the current can be significantly suppressed by increasing the CR length, while no complete suppression can be induced by the increase of the CR width, indicating that the CR length and width will make different influences on the ZPNR transport. Moreover, the energy spectrums of two electrodes, the molecular energy levels of the CR, the transmission coefficients, and the transmission eigenstates are further calculated so as to clearly expound the anomalous properties and their universalities. We believe this research can provide a meaningful guidance for developing the phosphorene-based electronic devices.