No Arabic abstract
Strain fold-like deformations on armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) can be properly engineered in experimental setups, and could lead to a new controlling tool for gaps and transport properties. Here, we analyze the electronic properties of folded AGNRs relating the electronic responses and the mechanical deformation. An important and universal parameter for the gap engineering is the ribbon percent width variation, i.e., the difference between the deformed and undeformed ribbon widths. AGNRs bandgap can be tuned mechanically in a well defined bounded range of energy values, eventually leading to a metallic system. This characteristic provides a new controllable degree of freedom that allows manipulation of electronic currents. We show that the numerical results are analytically predicted by solving the Dirac equation for the strained system.
We study the effects of the structural corrugation or rippling on the electronic properties of undoped armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNR). First, reanalyzing the single corrugated graphene layer we find that the two inequivalent Dirac points (DP), move away one from the other. Otherwise, the Fermi velocity decrease by increasing rippling. Regarding the AGNRs, whose metallic behavior depends on their width, we analyze in particular the case of the zero gap band-structure AGNRs. By solving the Dirac equation with the adequate boundary condition we show that due to the shifting of the DP a gap opens in the spectra. This gap scale with the square of the rate between the high and the wavelength of the deformation. We confirm this prediction by exact numerical solution of the finite width rippled AGNR. Moreover, we find that the quantum conductance, calculated by the non equilibrium Greens function technique vanish when the gap open. The main conclusion of our results is that a conductance gap should appear for all undoped corrugated AGNR independent of their width.
We investigate electronic transport in lithographically patterned graphene ribbon structures where the lateral confinement of charge carriers creates an energy gap near the charge neutrality point. Individual graphene layers are contacted with metal electrodes and patterned into ribbons of varying widths and different crystallographic orientations. The temperature dependent conductance measurements show larger energy gaps opening for narrower ribbons. The sizes of these energy gaps are investigated by measuring the conductance in the non-linear response regime at low temperatures. We find that the energy gap scales inversely with the ribbon width, thus demonstrating the ability to engineer the band gap of graphene nanostructures by lithographic processes.
The wavefunction of a massless fermion consists of two chiralities, left-handed and right-handed, which are eigenstates of the chiral operator. The theory of weak interactions of elementally particle physics is not symmetric about the two chiralities, and such a symmetry breaking theory is referred to as a chiral gauge theory. The chiral gauge theory can be applied to the massless Dirac particles of graphene. In this paper we show within the framework of the chiral gauge theory for graphene that a topological soliton exists near the boundary of a graphene nanoribbon in the presence of a strain. This soliton is a zero-energy state connecting two chiralities and is an elementally excitation transporting a pseudospin. The soliton should be observable by means of a scanning tunneling microscopy experiment.
Electronic states at the ends of a narrow armchair nanoribbon give rise to a pair of non-locally entangled spins. We propose two experiments to probe these magnetic states, based on magnetometry and tunneling spectroscopy, in which correlation effects lead to a striking, nonlinear response to external magnetic fields. On the basis of low-energy theories that we derive here, it is remarkably simple to assess these nonlinear signatures for magnetic edge states. The effective theories are especially suitable in parameter regimes where other methods such as quantum Monte-Carlo simulations are exceedingly difficult due to exponentially small energy scales. The armchair ribbon setup discussed here provides a promisingly well-controlled (both experimentally and theoretically) environment for studying the principles behind edge magnetism in graphene-based nano-structures.
By analytically constructing the matrix elements of an electron-phonon interaction for the $D$ band in the Raman spectra of armchair graphene nanoribbons, we show that pseudospin and momentum conservation result in (i) a $D$ band consisting of two components, (ii) a $D$ band Raman intensity that is enhanced only when the polarizations of the incident and scattered light are parallel to the armchair edge, and (iii) the $D$ band softening/hardening behavior caused by the Kohn anomaly effect is correlated with that of the $G$ band. Several experiments are mentioned that are relevant to these results. It is also suggested that pseudospin is independent of the boundary condition for the phonon mode, while momentum conservation depends on it.