Scanning gate microscopy of localized states in a gate-defined bilayer graphene channel

Abstract

We use scanning gate microscopy to demonstrate the presence of localized states arising from potential inhomogeneities in a 50nm wide, gate-defined conducting channel in encapsulated bilayer graphene. When imaging the channel conductance under the influence of a local tip-induced potential, we observe ellipses of enhanced conductance as a function of the tip position. These ellipses allow us to infer the location of the localized states and to study their dependence on the displacement field. For large displacement fields, we observe that localized states tend to occur halfway into the channel. All our observations can be well explained within the framework of stochastic Coulomb blockade.