Correlated charged impurity scattering and exchange effects in three-layer bilayer graphene systems

Since the successful isolation of graphene in 2004, bilayer graphene (BLG) has emerged as one of the most extensively studied multilayer graphene systems. The transport properties of BLG and N-layer bilayer graphene structures have typically been investigated in the high-carrier-density regime using the random phase approximation (RPA). In this work, we focus on the low-density regime and calculate the carrier-density-dependent conductivity σ(n) of three-layer bilayer graphene (3BLG) systems, taking into account charged impurity scattering with spatial correlations. In this regime, electron–electron exchange effects must be considered. Therefore, employing a semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory within both the RPA and the Hubbard approximation (HA), we study the conductivities of the first and second layers, $${\sigma }_{1}(n)$$ σ 1 ( n ) and $${\sigma }_{2}(n)$$ σ 2 ( n ) , as functions of the impurity correlation length $${r}_{0}$$ r 0 . The results presented in this work provide further insight into the role of electron–electron exchange effects on σ(n) in 3BLG structures. Graphical abstract