Independent channel approach to electron and phonon transport in corrugated graphene ribbons

Graphene’s exceptional electric and thermal properties, such as massless Dirac fermions and ultra-high thermal conductivity, are reshaping microelectronics. However, the Mermin–Wagner theorem implies that long-range crystalline order in strictly two-dimensional (2D) systems is unstable at finite temperature, consistent with intrinsic ripples observed in graphene [1]. In this work, we study the electronic and phonon transport in corrugated mesoscopic graphene ribbons using an independent channel method developed for the tight-banding and Born–von Karman models. This method maps the rippled hexagonal lattice onto single- and dual-channels, enabling calculations of electronic and lattice thermal conductance within the Landauer-Büttiker framework via the transfer matrix approach [2]. Our results show quantized electrical and thermal conductance that are suppressed by rippling. For a suspended graphene ribbon, the temperature-induced rippling and buckling notably alter both electronic and phonon transport. The calculated electric and thermal conductance agrees well with the reported experiments. Finally, this fully real-space study provides an efficient and scalable theoretical framework for exploring electron and phonon transport in corrugated 2D materials and supports the rational design of graphene-based electronic devices. [1] A. Fasolino, J. H. Los, and M. I. Katsnelson, Nat. Mater. 6, 858 (2007). [2] F. Sánchez, V. Sánchez, and C. Wang, Nanomaterials 12, 3223 (2022).