Thermally activated conductivity in gapped bilayer graphene

This is a theoretical study of electron transport in gated bilayer graphene — a novel semiconducting material with a tunable band gap. It is shown that the quantum mechanical superposition between conduction and valence band states enhances the subgap conductivity and facilitates the thermally activated transport. The mechanism proposed can also lead to the non-monotonic conductivity vs. temperature dependence at a band gap size of the order of 10meV. The effect can be observed in gapped bilayer graphene sandwiched in boron nitride where the electron-hole puddles and flexural phonons are strongly suppressed.