Boltzmann transport and residual conductivity in bilayer graphene

Shaffique Adam, S. Das Sarma

Published 2007-10-31, updated 2008-03-21Version 4

A Drude-Boltzmann theory is used to calculate the transport properties of bilayer graphene. We find that for typical carrier densities accessible in graphene experiments, the dominant scattering mechanism is overscreened Coulomb impurities that behave like short-range scatterers. We anticipate that the conductivity $\sigma(n)$ is linear in $n$ at high density and has a plateau at low density corresponding to a residual density of $n^* = \sqrt{n_{\rm imp} {\tilde n}}$, where ${\tilde n}$ is a constant which we estimate using a self-consistent Thomas-Fermi screening approximation to be ${\tilde n} \approx 0.01 ~q_{\rm TF}^2 \approx 140 \times 10^{10} {\rm cm}^{-2}$. Analytic results are derived for the conductivity as a function of the charged impurity density. We also comment on the temperature dependence of the bilayer conductivity.