Quantum confinement of Dirac quasiparticles in graphene patterned with subnanometer precision
arXiv:2005.12205 · doi:10.1002/adma.202001119
Abstract
Quantum confinement of graphene Dirac-like electrons in artificially crafted nanometer structures is a long sought goal that would provide a strategy to selectively tune the electronic properties of graphene, including bandgap opening or quantization of energy levels However, creating confining structures with nanometer precision in shape, size and location, remains as an experimental challenge, both for top-down and bottom-up approaches. Moreover, Klein tunneling, offering an escape route to graphene electrons, limits the efficiency of electrostatic confinement. Here, a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is used to create graphene nanopatterns, with sub-nanometer precision, by the collective manipulation of a large number of H atoms. Individual graphene nanostructures are built at selected locations, with predetermined orientations and shapes, and with dimensions going all the way from 2 nanometers up to 1 micron. The method permits to erase and rebuild the patterns at will, and it can be implemented on different graphene substrates. STM experiments demonstrate that such graphene nanostructures confine very efficiently graphene Dirac quasiparticles, both in zero and one dimensional structures. In graphene quantum dots, perfectly defined energy band gaps up to 0.8 eV are found, that scale as the inverse of the dots linear dimension, as expected for massless Dirac fermions
arXiv commentMain Manuscript and Supporting Information
References in corpus (24)
- Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
- Energy Band Gap Engineering of Graphene Nanoribbons
- Control of graphene's properties by reversible hydrogenation
- Chiral tunneling and the Klein paradox in graphene
- Chaotic Dirac billiard in graphene quantum dots
- On-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edge topology
- Magnetism in Graphene Induced by Single-Atom Defects
- Tailoring the atomic structure of graphene nanoribbons by STM lithography
- Room temperature magnetic order on zigzag edges of narrow graphene nanoribbons
- Localization of Dirac electrons by Moire patterns in graphene bilayers
- Atomic-scale control of graphene magnetism using hydrogen atoms
- Exceptional ballistic transport in epitaxial graphene nanoribbons
- First direct observation of a nearly ideal graphene band structure
- Unravelling the intrinsic and robust nature of van Hove singularities in twisted bilayer graphene
- Directed self-organization of graphene nanoribbons on SiC
- Imaging electrostatically confined Dirac fermions in graphene quantum dots
- Creating and Probing Electron Whispering Gallery Modes in Graphene
- An On/Off Berry Phase Switch in Circular Graphene Resonators
- Role of pseudospin in quasiparticle interferences in epitaxial graphene probed by high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy
- Electronic structure of triangular, hexagonal and round graphene flakes near the Fermi level
- Interaction Driven Quantum Hall Wedding cake-like Structures in Graphene Quantum Dots
- Visualization and Control of Single Electron Charging in Bilayer Graphene Quantum Dots
- Quantum oscillations from Fermi arcs
- Towards scalable nano-engineering of graphene
Cited by in corpus (5)
- Precise atom manipulation through deep reinforcement learning
- Large-area nanoengineering of graphene corrugations for visible-frequency graphene plasmons
- Quantum Confinement of Electron-Phonon Coupling in Graphene Quantum Dots
- Electron scattering of mass-inverted in graphene quantum dots
- Quasiperiodic criticality and spin-triplet superconductivity in superconductor-antiferromagnet moire patterns