Electronic transport in locally gated graphene nanoconstrictions

We have developed the combination of an etching and deposition technique that enables the fabrication of locally gated graphene nanostructures of arbitrary design. Employing this method, we have fabricated graphene nanoconstrictions with local tunable transmission and characterized their electronic properties. An order of magnitude enhanced gate efficiency is achieved adopting the local gate geometry with thin dielectric gate oxide. A complete turn off of the device is demonstrated as a function of the local gate voltage. Such strong suppression of device conductance was found to be due to both quantum confinement and Coulomb blockade effects in the constricted graphene nanostructures.