the conductance $G$, rather than the conductivity $\sigma$, because NEGF simulates a 2D channel with specific dimensions, thus, the units of the two quantities are also different. This could be converted to conductivity using the channel dimensions, however since we do not have a specific thickness associated with our 2D simulation ($W=15$ nm, $L=100$ nm only), we use the conductance $G$ from here on. Also note that in all our results below we refer to $G$ as the conductance, not to be confused with the Green’s function in Eqs. (\[eq1\])-(\[eq9\]), for which it is also customary to use $G$.

Figure 1(a) shows the pristine channel that we begin with. The conduction band reference is set at $E_{\text{C}} = 0$ eV. The Fermi level is placed also at $E_{\text{F}} = 0$ eV as this provides the highest $PF$ [@Kim09; @Thes15JAP; @Foster17]. Thus, we begin with an optimal channel as our basis, and we then proceed with inserting nanostructured features. The first nanostructured feature is SL type boundaries that form potential barriers for electrons as shown in Fig. 1(b). We consider thickness of $L_{\text{SL}} = 5$ nm and arbitrarily choose barrier heights of $V_{\text{SL}} = 0.05$ eV $(\approx 2 k_B T)$. We 