Significant interplay effect of silicon dopants on electronic properties in graphene

Using first-principles calculations, we have systematically studied the effects of the interplay between Si dopants in graphene. Four stable Si-pair doping configurations have been predicted and investigated. It is shown that the Si dopants tend to agglomerate in graphene. In particular, the band structures can be remarkably modulated by the doping sites of Si atoms in graphene. With the change of the Si–Si distance, the electronic structures can be widely tuned to exhibit isotropic, direction-dependent, and semiconducting properties. Based on this unique interplay effect, we reveal two ordered C–Si alloys, CSi and C₃Si. It is found that CSi has an indirect band gap of 2.5 eV while C₃Si still retains the Dirac features. Our results suggest that more remarkable electronic properties of graphene can be obtained by controllable tuning of the multi-doping of Si in graphene.     

Structural,optical and photocatalytic properties of (Mg,Al)-codoped ZnO powders prepared by sol–gel method

Structural and optical properties of 1 at % Al-doped Zn_1−xMg_xO (x=0–8%) powders prepared by sol–gel method were systematically investigated by means of X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, ultraviolet–visible absorbance measurement, photoluminescence and Raman scattering spectra. All the powders retained the hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO. The band gap and near band emission energies determined from absorbance and photoluminescence spectra increased linearly with increasing Mg content, respectively, which implied that the Mg worked effectively on ZnO band gap engineering, irrespective of Al codoping. However, according to the PL and Raman scattering studies, for the sample of x=8%, the Al doping efficiency was decreased by higher Mg codoping. On the other hand, the effect of Mg codoping on photocatalytic degradation of methylene orange was explored experimentally. The substitution of Mg ions at Zn sites shifted the conduction band toward higher energies and then enhanced the photocatalytic activity, while the incorporation of interstitial Mg ions and decreased Al doping efficiency for higher Mg doping sample (x=8%) reduced the photocatalytic activity.     

Diamond-like C2H nanolayer, diamane: Simulation of the structure and properties

We consider a new C₂H nanostructure based on bilayer graphene transformed under the covalent bond of hydrogen atoms adsorbed on its external surface, as well as compounds of carbon atoms located opposite each other in neighboring layers. They constitute a “film” of the 〈111〉 diamond with a thickness of less than 1 nm, which is called diamane. The energy characteristics and electron spectra of diamane, graphene, and diamond are calculated using the density functional theory and are compared with each other. The effective Young’s moduli and destruction thresholds of diamane and graphene membranes are determined by the molecular dynamics method. It is shown that C₂H diamane is more stable than CH graphane, its dielectric “gap” is narrower than the band gap of bulk diamond (by 0.8 eV) and graphane (by 0.3 eV), and is harder and more brittle than the latter.     

铂掺杂扶手椅型石墨烯纳米带的电学特性研究

本文采用基于密度泛函理论(DFT)的第一性原理计算了铂原子填充扶手椅型石墨烯纳米带(AGNR)中双空位结构的电学性能.计算结果表明: 通过控制铂原子的掺杂位置, 可以实现纳米带循环经历小带隙半导体—金属—大带隙半导体的相变过程; 纳米带边缘位置是铂原子掺杂的最稳定位置, 边缘掺杂纳米带的带隙值随宽度的变化与本征AGNR一样可用三簇曲线表示, 但在较大宽度时简并成两条曲线, 一定程度上抑制了带隙值的振荡; 并且铂原子边缘掺杂导致宽度系数N_a = 3p和3p + 1(p是一个整数)的几个较窄纳米带的带隙中出现杂质能级, 有效地降低了其过大的带隙值. 此外, 铂掺杂AGNR的能带结构对掺杂浓度不是很敏感, 从而降低了对实验精度的挑战. 本文的计算有利于推动石墨烯纳米带在纳米电子学方面的应用.     

Electronic structure and optical properties of boron-sulfur symmetric codoping in 4 × 4 graphene systems

The electronic structure and optical properties of boron-doped, sulfur-doped, andboron-sulfur-codoped graphene systems have been studied by using first-principlescalculations. Energy band structure and density of states are presented to describe theelectronic properties. The doping can open the band gap and change the optical propertiesof graphene. For all optical properties of doped graphene systems, parallel(E _∥) polarization and perpendicular(E _⊥) polarization are presented. Theoptical properties under two kinds of polarizations are reflected in the range of peakheight and the change of some extraordinary features.     

扭转形变对石墨烯吸附O原子电学和光学性质影响的电子理论研究

基于密度泛函理论的第一性原理方法研究了扭转形变对石墨烯吸附O体系结构稳定性、电子结构和光学性质,包括吸附能、带隙、吸收系数及反射率的影响.研究发现,吸附O原子后,距O原子最近的C原子被拔起,导致石墨烯平面发生扭曲.吸附能计算表明,扭转形变使石墨烯吸附O原子体系结构稳定性下降,而扭转程度对结构稳定性影响微弱.能带结构分析发现,O原子的吸附使石墨烯由金属变成半导体,扭转形变发生时,可实现其从半导体到金属、再到半导体特性的转变.扭转角为12°的吸附O原子体系为间接带隙,而其他出现带隙的体系均为直接带隙.与本征石墨烯受扭体系相比,吸附O原子体系的电子结构对扭转形变的敏感度降低,其中扭转角在10°—16°范围内变化时,带隙始终稳定在0.11 eV附近,即在此扭转角范围内始终对应窄带隙半导体.在光学性能中,受扭转形变的吸附体系吸收系数和反射率峰值较未受扭转形变石墨烯吸附O原子体系均减弱,且随着扭转程度的加剧,均出现红移到蓝移的转变.     

Ab initio studies of isolated hydrogen vacancies in graphane

We present a density functional study of various hydrogen vacancies located on a single hexagonal ring of graphane (fully hydrogenated graphene) considering the effects of charge states and the position of the Fermi level. We find that uncharged vacancies that lead to a carbon sublattice balance are energetically favorable and are wide band gap systems just like pristine graphane. Vacancies that do create a sublattice imbalance introduce spin polarized states into the band gap, and exhibit a half-metallic behavior with a magnetic moment of 1.00 μ_B per vacancy. The results show the possibility of using vacancies in graphane for novel spin-based applications. When charging such vacancy configurations, the deep donor (+1/0) and deep acceptor (0/−1) transition levels within the band gap are noted. We also note a half-metallic to metallic transition and a significant reduction of the induced magnetic moment due to both negative and positive charge doping.     

Electronic structure and optical properties of non-metallic modified graphene: a first-principles study

In this paper, the electronic structure and stability of the intrinsic, B-, N-, Si-, S-doped graphene are studied based on first-principles calculations of density functional theory. Firstly, the intrinsic, B-, N-, Si-, S-doped graphene structures are optimized, and then the forming energy, band structure, density of states, differential charge density are analyzed and calculated. The results show that B- and Si-doped systems are p-type doping, while N is n-type doping. By comparing the forming energy, it is found that N atoms are more easily doped in graphene. In addition, for B-, N-, Si-doped systems, it is found that the doping atoms will open the band gap, leading to a great change in the band structure of the doping system. Finally, we systematically study the optical properties of the different configurations. By comparison, it is found that the order of light sensitivity in the visible region is as follows: S-doped> Si-doped> pure > B-doped > N-doped. Our results will provide theoretical guidance for the stability and electronic structure of non-metallic doped graphene.     

Acetone Adsorption on Pristine and Pt-doped Graphene: A First-Principles vdW-DF Study

Using van der Waals corrected density functional theory (vdW-DF) method we have investigated the adsorption of acetone molecule on pristine and Pt-doped graphene. Several active sites for both the interacting systems have been considered in the adsorption process including full geometry optimization. We have analyzed the structural and electrical properties of energetically favorable configurations. The results show that adsorption of acetone molecule on the Pt-doped graphene is energetically preferable. The binding energy and bonding distance are determined to be -5.277 eV and 2.206 Å, respectively, accompanying with charge transfer of 1.11 e. Furthermore, the Pt-O bond is rather significantly elongated when acetone is adsorbed on Pt-doped graphene. Compared to pristine graphene, the Pt-doped graphene has stronger interaction with the acetone and may provide more sensitive signal for a single acetone molecule. Meanwhile, practically, the band gap of Pt-doped graphene would become reduced after acetone adsorption. Consequently, our first-principles study presents evidence for a coherent benchmark for the applicability of Pt-doped graphene for acetone adsorption and detection.     

Electronic and magnetic properties of copper-family-element atom adsorbed graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edges

We have investigated the electronic and magnetic properties of copper-family-element (CFE) atom adsorbed graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with zigzag edges using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory. We found that CFE atoms energetically prefer to be adsorbed at the edges of nanoribbons. Charges are transferred between the CFE atom and carbon atoms at the edge, which reduce the local magnetic moment of carbon atoms in the vicinity of adsorption site and change the electronic structure of GNRs. As a result, Cu adsorbed zigzag GNR is a semiconductor with energy band gap of 0.88 eV in beta-spin and energy gap of 0.22 eV in alpha-spin, while Ag adsorbed zigzag GNR and Au adsorbed zigzag GNR are both half-metallic with the energy gaps of 0.68 eV and 0.63 eV in beta-spin, respectively. These results show that CFE atom adsorbed zigzag GNRs can be applied in nanoelectronics and spintronics.     

Study on the structure and optical property of Zn1−xCuxO sol–gel thin films on quartz substrate

Zn_1−xCu_xO thin films (x=0, 1.0, 3.0, 5.0%) are prepared on quartz substrate by sol–gel method. The structure and morphology of the samples are investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results show that Cu ions were effectively penetrated into the ZnO crystal lattices with substitutional and interstitial impurities to form stable solid solutions without changing the polycrystalline wurtzite structure. Two peaks at 420 nm (2.95 eV, violet), 485 nm (2.56 eV, blue) have been observed from the photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the samples. It is concluded that the violet peak may correspond to the exciton emission; the blue emission corresponds to the electron transition from the bottom of the conduction band to the acceptor level of zinc vacancy. The optical test shows that the optical band gap E_g is decreased with the increase amount of Cu doping in ZnO. The band gap decrease from 3.40 eV to 3.25 eV gradually. It is also found that the transmission rate is increased rapidly with the increase of Cu ions concentration.     

B/N掺杂对双层石墨烯电子特性影响的第一性原理研究

利用平面波超软赝势方法研究了B/N原子单掺杂和共掺杂对双层石墨烯电子特性的影响.对掺杂双层石墨烯进行结构优化,并计算了能带结构、态密度、分波态密度等.分析表明,层间范德瓦尔斯相互作用对双层石墨烯的电子特性有比较明显的影响;B/N原子单掺杂分别对应p型和n型掺杂,会使掺杂片层的能带平移,使得体系能带结构产生较大分裂;双层掺杂的石墨烯能带结构与掺杂原子的相对位置和距离有关,对电子特性有明显的调控作用.其中特别有意义的是,B/N双层共掺杂在不同位置情况下会得到金属性或禁带宽度约为0.3 eV的半导体能带.     

Acetone Adsorption on Pristine and Pt-doped Graphene:A First-Principles vdW-DF Study

Using van der Waals corrected density functional theory(vdW-DF) method we have investigated the adsorption of acetone molecule on pristine and Pt-doped graphene.Several active sites for both the interacting systems have been considered in the adsorption process including full geometry optimization.We have analyzed the structural and electrical properties of energetically favorable configurations.The results show that adsorption of acetone molecule on the Pt-doped graphene is energetically preferable.The binding energy and bonding distance are determined to be-5.277 eV and 2.206 A,respectively,accompanying with charge transfer of 1.11 e.Furthermore,the Pt-0 bond is rather significantly elongated when acetone is adsorbed on Pt-doped graphene.Compared to pristine graphene,the Pt-doped graphene has stronger interaction with the acetone and may provide more sensitive signai for a single acetone molecule.Meanwhile,practically,the band gap of Pt-doped graphene would become reduced after acetone adsorption.Consequently,our first-principles study presents evidence for a coherent benchmark for the applicability of Pt-doped graphene for acetone adsorption and detection.     

The importance of electron correlation in graphene and hydrogenated graphene

Local density approximation (LDA) and Green function effective Coulomb (GW) calculations are performed to investigate the effect of electronic correlations on the electronic properties of both graphene and graphane. The size of band gap in graphane increases from 3.7 eV in LDA to 4.9 eV in GW approximation. By calculating maximally localized Wannier wave functions, we evaluate the necessary integrals to get the Hubbard U and the exchange J interaction from first principles for both graphene and graphane. Our ab-initio estimates indicate that in the case of graphene, in addition to the hopping amplitude t ～ 2.8 eV giving rise to the Dirac nature of low lying excitations, the Hubbard U value of ～8.7 eV gives rise to a super-exchange strength of J _AFM ～ 3.5 eV. This value dominates over the direct (ferromagnetic) exchange value of J _FM ～ 1.6 eV. This brings substantial Mott-Heisenberg aspects into the problem of graphene. Moreover, similarly large values of the Hubbard and super-exchange strength in graphane suggests that the nature of gap in graphane has substantial Mott character.     

Optical characterization of band gap graded ZnMgO films

We investigated the optical properties of compositionally graded Zn_1?xMg_xO (g-ZnMgO) films using spectroscopic ellipsometry. The g-ZnMgO and ZnO films were grown on Pt/Ti/SiO₂/Si substrates by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis. We simulated a uniformly graded optical band gap layer on the Pt substrate to reproduce the experimental result. The band gap of the bottommost layer of the g-ZnMgO film was estimated to be ～3.22 eV, the same as the undoped ZnO film. Then we considered a linearly increasing band gap with the film composition, and obtained a band gap of ～3.56 eV for the topmost layer of the film. In addition, the exciton peak showed a strong increase for the topmost layer of the film suggesting an important role of doping.     

Structural and electronic properties of H-passivated graphene

The atomic and electronic structures of graphane (hydrogen-passivated graphene) are theoretically investigated using the local density approximation (LDA) of the density functional theory (DFT) and the pseudopotential method. Our total energy calculations suggest that the chairlike configuration for graphane is more energetically stable than the boatlike and tablelike configurations by approximately 0.129 eV/cell and 0.655 eV/cell, respectively. Our calculations suggest that the LDA band gap of the chairlike structure is approximately 3.9 eV. The equilibrium geometry and the band structure of the chairlike conformer are investigated and compared with the available experimental and theoretical data. We further present total and partial charge density to reveal the orbital nature of the highest occupied and the lowest unoccupied states.     

Electronic properties of BN-doped bilayer graphene and graphyne in the presence of electric field

In the present paper, we have used density functional theory to study electronic properties of bilayer graphene and graphyne doped with B and N impurities in the presence of electric field. It has been demonstrated that a band gap is opened in the band structures of the bilayer graphene and graphyne by B and N doping. We have also investigated influence of electric field on the electronic properties of BN-doped bilayer graphene and graphyne. It is found that the band gaps induced by B and N impurities are increased by applying electric field. Our results reveal that doping with B and N, and applying electric field are an effective method to open and control a band gap which is useful to design carbon-based next-generation electronic devices.     

Ferromagnetism in noncompensated (Mn,Ga)-codoped ZnO films

Mn/Ga noncompensated codoped ZnO films were prepared on c-cut sapphire substrates via pulsed laser deposition. The structural, magnetic, transport, and optical properties of the films were then investigated. Addition of the Ga donor increases the electron concentration and enhances the magnetization in these films because of the net negative charge of the special noncompensated codoping, which can adjust the carrier concentration as well as the magnetic moment. Moreover, the Fermi level moves into the conduction band because of the increase in electron concentration, which results in an increase in the optical band gap value, from 3.28 eV for the undoped ZnO film to 3.61 eV for the (Mn,Ga)-codoped ZnO film.     

Metal-semiconductor transition of graphene nanoribbons with different addends

Using a LCAO method, which is based on spinless sp³ scheme, we have studied the electronic properties of graphene nanoribbons with zigzag edges (ZGNRs) terminated partially by methylene groups. Metal-semiconductor transition is proved when the H atoms at both sides of ZGNRs are partially substituted by methylene groups. Furthermore, when one-third of H atoms are substituted and the distribution of methylenes is symmetric, the band gap comes to about 0.59 eV, which is the widest energy gap in this work. Otherwise, when the addends at both sides are of asymmetric distribution, a band gap of only 0.21 eV is obtained. These results suggest that the addends at the edge of ZGNRs play an important role in modifying the electronic properties.     

Formation of a quasi-free-standing graphene with a band gap at the dirac point by Pb atoms intercalation under graphene on Re(0001)

The control of the graphene electronic structure is one of the most important problems in modern condensed matter physics. The graphene monolayer synthesized on the Re(0001) surface and then subjected to the intercalation of Pb atoms is studied by angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and low-energy electron diffraction. The intercalation of Pb atoms under graphene takes place when the substrate is annealed above 500°C. As a result of the intercalation of Pb atoms, graphene becomes quasi-free-standing and a local band gap appears at the Dirac point. The band gap changes with the substrate temperature during the formation of the graphene/Pb/Re(0001) system. The band gap is 0.3 eV at an annealing temperature of 620°C and it increases up to 0.4 eV upon annealing at 830°C. Based on our data, we conclude that the band gap is mainly caused by the hybridization of the graphene π state with the rhenium 5d states located near the Dirac point of the graphene π state.