title: The positive piezoconductive effect in graphene.
abstract: As the thinnest conductive and elastic material, graphene is expected to play a crucial role in post-Moore era. Besides applications on electronic devices, graphene has shown great potential for nano-electromechanical systems. While interlayer interactions play a key role in modifying the electronic structures of layered materials, no attention has been given to their impact on electromechanical properties. Here we report the positive piezoconductive effect observed in suspended bi- and multi-layer graphene. The effect is highly layer number dependent and shows the most pronounced response for tri-layer graphene. The effect, and its dependence on the layer number, can be understood as resulting from the strain-induced competition between interlayer coupling and intralayer transport, as confirmed by the numerical calculations based on the non-equilibrium Green's function method. Our results enrich the understanding of graphene and point to layer number as a powerful tool for tuning the electromechanical properties of graphene for future applications.
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Kang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: ICQD, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.|Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.|State Key Laboratory of ASIC and System, Department of Microelectronics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Wenzhong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Bao
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Erfu
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: ICQD, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.|Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Yafei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Miao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yajun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Junwen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Zhaoguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Fengqi
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Xinran
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Xiangang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.|School of Physics, Monash University, Monash, Victoria 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Fuhrer
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Baigeng
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: ICQD, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.|Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Zhenhua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0962-5424
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Miao
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Dingyu
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xing