Electronic structure and Peierls instability in graphene nanoribbons sculpted in graphane

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbons are semiconductor nanostructures with great potentials in nanoelectronics. Their realization particularly with small lateral dimensions below a few nanometers, however, remains challenging. Here we theoretically analyze zig-zag graphene nanoribbons created in a graphane substrate (a fully saturated two-dimensional hydrocarbon with formula CH) and predict that they are stable down to the limit of a single carbon chain. We exploit density functional theory with B3LYP functional that accurately treats exchange and correlation effects and demonstrate that at small widths below a few chains these zig-zag nanoribbons are semiconducting due to the Peierls instability similar to the case of polyacetylene. Graphene nanoribbons in graphane might represent a viable strategy for the realization of ultra-narrow semiconducting graphene nanoribbons with regular edges and controlled chemical termination and open the way for the exploration of the competition between Peierls distortion and spin effects in artificial one-dimensional carbon structures.

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Prospects for hydrogen storage in graphene
• Electronic properties of mesoscopic graphene structures: charge confinement and control of spin and charge transport
• The Influence of Graphene Curvature on Hydrogen Adsorption: Towards Hydrogen Storage Devices
• Electronic properties of gated triangular graphene quantum dots: Magnetism, correlations, and geometrical effects
• Electronic and magnetic properties of superlattices of graphene/graphane nanoribbons with different edge hydrogenation
• Edge states and enhanced spin-orbit interaction at graphene/graphane interfaces
• One-dimensional half-metallic interfaces of two-dimensional honeycomb insulators
• High-Throughput Design of Peierls and Charge Density Wave Phases in Q1D Organometallic Materials
• Bipolar Transistor Based on Graphane
• Multistable rippling of graphene on SiC: A Density Functional Theory study