title: A first principles scanning tunneling potentiometry study of an opaque graphene grain boundary in the ballistic transport regime.
abstract: We report on a theoretical interpretation of scanning tunneling potentiometry (STP), formulated within the Keldysh non-equilibrium Green's function description of quantum transport. By treating the probe tip as an electron point source/sink, it is shown that this approach provides an intuitive bridge between existing theoretical interpretations of scanning tunneling microscopy and STP. We illustrate this through ballistic transport simulations of the potential drop across an opaque graphene grain boundary, where atomistic features are predicted that might be imaged through high resolution STP measurements. The relationship between the electrochemical potential profile measured and the electrostatic potential drop across such a nanoscale defect is also explored in this model system.
authors.affiliation: Division of Materials Engineering, Department of Mining & Materials Engineering, and Centre for the Physics of Materials, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 0C5.
authors.forename: Kirk H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Bevan