Insulating behavior in metallic bilayer graphene: Interplay between density inhomogeneity and temperature

Abstract: We investigate bilayer graphene transport in the presence of electron-hole puddles induced by long-range charged impurities in the environment. We explain the insulating behavior observed in the temperature dependent conductivity of low mobility bilayer graphene using an analytic statistical theory taking into account the non-mean-field nature of transport in the highly inhomogeneous density and potential landscape. We find that the puddles can induce, even far from the charge neutrality point, a coexisting metallic and insulating transport behavior due to the random local activation gap in the system.