Ab initio simulation of amorphous graphite

Abstract

A disorder-order transition from amorphous carbon (aC) to layered amorphous graphene (LAG) has been predicted using ab-initio methods. Amorphous carbon at densities close to the graphitic density show a strong proclivity to layer in NVT simulations near 3000K . Our calculations have shown that graphitization is strongly dependent on the simulation temperature and is not observed under 2500K. The origin of such a disorder-order transition has been studied using various structural analyses. Each layer of LAG is a layer of amorphous graphene (aG) including pentagons and heptagons in addition to hexagons and the planes are separated by about 3.2A. LAG obtained from the NVT simulations were highly stable. The electronic charge density, especially for the pi and pi${}^{\ast }$ states, was computed with the Hyed-Scuseria-Ernzerhof (HSE) hybrid functional and compared with crystalline graphite (cG). The impact of structural disorder has been studied in detail, especially the consequences of disorder to electronic transport.

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