  We investigate the combined influence of structural defects and uniaxial
longitudinal strain on the electronic transport properties of armchair graphene
nanoribbons using the numerical approach based on the semiempirical
tight-binding model, the Landauer formalism, and the recursion method for Green
functions. We calculate the conductance of graphene nanoribbons in the quantum
coherent regime with different types and concentrations of defects. Further, we
apply uniform planar tension to the nonideal graphene ribbons with randomly
distributed and oriented single and double vacancies and Stone-Wales defects.
Since transport characteristics of graphene nanoribbons are found to be very
sensitive to edge termination and aspect ratio, and it has been shown that
energy gaps can emerge under critical strain; the interplay of both effects
needs to be studied. We show that band gap engineering using strain is still
possible for nonideal armchair ribbons with a small defect concentration, as
the oscillatory behavior of the gap is preserved.
