From quantum confinement to quantum Hall effect in graphene nanostructures

We study the evolution of the two-terminal conductance plateaus with a magnetic field for armchair graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) and graphene nanoconstrictions (GNCs). For GNRs, the conductance plateaus of 2e(2)/h at zero magnetic field evolve smoothly to the quantum Hall regime, where the plateaus in conductance at even multiples of 2e(2)/h disappear. It is shown that the relation between the energy and magnetic field does not follow the same behavior as in "bulk" graphene, reflecting the different electronic structure of a GNR. For the nanoconstrictions we show that the conductance plateaus do not have the same sharp behavior in zero magnetic field as in a GNR, which reflects the presence of backscattering in such structures. Our results show good agreement with recent experiments on high-quality graphene nanoconstrictions. The behavior with the magnetic field for a GNC shows some resemblance to the one for a GNR but now depends also on the length of the constriction. By analyzing the evolution of the conductance plateaus in the presence of the magnetic field we can obtain the width of the structures studied and show that this is a powerful experimental technique in the study of the electronic and structural properties of narrow structures.