We have performed a density functional study of graphene adsorbed on Au(111) surface using both a local density approximation and a semiempirical van der Waals approach proposed by Grimme, known as the DFT-D2 method. Graphene physisorbed on metal has
the linear dispersion preserved in the band-structure, but the Fermi level of the system is shifted with respect to the conical points which results in a doping effect. We show that the type and amount of doping depends not only on the choice of the exchange-correlation functional used in the calculations, but also on the supercell geometry that models the physical system. We analyzed how the factors such as the in-plane cell parameter and interlayer spacing in gold influence the Fermi level shift and we found that even a small variation in these parameters may cause a transition from p-type to n-type doping. We have selected a reasonable set of model parameters and obtained that graphene is either undoped or at most slightly p-type doped on the clean Au(111) surface, which seems to be in line with experimental findings. On the other hand, modifications of the substrate lattice may induce larger doping up to 0.30-0.40 eV depending on the graphene-metal adsorption distance. The sensitivity of the graphene-gold interface to the structural parameters may allow to tune doping across the samples which could lead to possible applications in graphene-based electronic devices. We believe that the present remarks can be also useful for other studies based on the periodic DFT.
We study the electronic properties of h-BN/graphene/h-BN ABC-stacked trilayer systems using tight binding and DFT methods. We comment on the recent work of Ramasubramaniam et al. (arxiv:1011.2489) whose results seem to be in disagreement with our rec
ent calculations. Detailed analysis reaffirms our previous conclusions.
Electronic properties of the graphene layer sandwiched between two hexagonal boron nitride sheets have been studied using the first-principles calculations and the minimal tight-binding model. It is shown that for the ABC-stacked structure in the abs
ence of external field the bands are linear in the vicinity of the Dirac points as in the case of single-layer graphene. For certain atomic configuration, the electric field effect allows opening of a band gap of over 230 meV. We believe that this mechanism of energy gap tuning could significantly improve the characteristics of graphene-based field-effect transistors and pave the way for future electronic applications.
The ferromagnetic nano-structures are recently of great interest for modern investigations. A comparison of the experimental data and theoretical results shows that the use of the standard molecular field approximation is insufficient for the descrip
tion of nano-structure properties. Therefore, we use the effective field approach in order to show the usefulness of the Valenta model generalized in this way. The agreement between experiment and theory is then excellent. The magnetization profiles and the calculated Curie temperatures are presented for the systems consisting of Ni and Co layers with different configuration of the surfaces and interfaces including terraces and wires. We have shown that the position in the system as well as the kind of neighbouring layers and their mutual interactions can determine the shape of magnetization profiles. The use of the Valenta model allows us to present all dependences in the layer resolved mode.
