Improved mobility models for charge transport in graphene

Charge transport in graphene is crucial for the design of a new generation of nanoscale electron devices. A reasonable model is represented by the semiclassical Boltzmann equations for electrons in the valence and conduction bands. As shown by Romano et al. (J. Comput. Phys., 2015), the discontinuous Galerkin methods are a viable way to tackle the problem of the numerical integration of these equations, even if efficient DSMC with a proper inclusion of the Pauli principle have been also devised. One of the advantages of the solutions obtained with deterministic approach is of course the absence of statistical noise. This fact is crucial for an accurate estimation of the low field mobility as proved by Majorana et al. (J. Math. Industry, 2016) in the case of a unipolar charge transport in a suspended graphene sheet under a constant electric field.

The mobility expressions are essential for the drift-diffusion equations which constitute the most adopted models for charge transport in CAD. Here the analysis by Majorana et al. (J. Math. Industry, 2016) is improved in two ways: by including the charge transport both in the valence and conduction bands; by taking into account the presence of an oxide as substrate for the graphene sheet. New models of mobility are obtained and, in particular, relevant improvements of the low field mobility are achieved.