Tight-binding approach to uniaxial strain in graphene

By V. M. Pereira, A. C. Castro Neto, N. M. R. Peres. 2008

1,032 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyze the effect of tensional strain in the electronic structure of graphene. In the absence of electron-electron interactions, within linear elasticity theory, and a tight-binding approach, we observe that strain can generate a bulk spectral gap. However, this gap is critical, requiring threshold deformations in excess of 20% and only along preferred directions with respect to the underlying lattice. The gapless Dirac spectrum is robust for small and moderate deformations and the gap appears as a consequence of the merging of the two inequivalent Dirac points only under considerable deformations of the lattice. We discuss how strain-induced anisotropy and local deformations can be used as a means to affect transport characteristics and pinch off current flow in graphene devices.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb1f01100be8de155a7194f20c7f09a8026112f1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. N. M. R. Peres
2. K. Novoselov
3. Francisco Guinea
4. E. Rossi
5. E. Hwang
6. A.K. Geim
7. S. Adam
8. A. C. Castro Neto

In Materials Chemistry

1. N. M. R. Peres
2. K. Novoselov
3. Francisco Guinea
4. E. Hwang
5. E. Rossi
6. A. C. Castro Neto
7. A.K. Geim
8. S. Adam

Citations in the corpus

• Strain effects in graphene and graphene nanoribbons: The underlying mechanism (2010, methodology): “It was previously suggested using an analytical model that a realistic band gap will be opened under such a collision [43], and a similar effect has also been observed in TB and DFT calculations [26, 30, 31].”
• Graphene versus MoS2: A short review (2014, background): “1 eV with a 24% uniaxial strain [171].”
• Strain effects on thermoelectric properties of two-dimensional materials (2015, background): “phenomenon that no sizeable energy gap opens in small and moderate uniaxially strained graphene has also been observed in other ab initio [61] and tight-binding calculations [62].”
• New directions in science and technology: two-dimensional crystals (2011, background): “Uniaxial strain can generate spectral gaps in the π -bands of graphene but it requires uniaxial strain in an excess of 20% [44], which is close (or above) to the limit where graphene breaks (in fact, graphene is a very brittle material, namely it responds elastically up to the point that it ruptures”
• Electronic transport in two-dimensional graphene (2010, background): “Even without a substrate, experiments reveal significant deformations (Meyer et al., 2007), although the theoretical picture is still contentious (Fasolino et al., 2007; Pereira et al., 2009; Thompson-Flagg et al., 2009).”
• Electronic properties of graphene in a strong magnetic field (2010, background): “…t′ = 2t is special insofar as it characterizes a topological phase transition between a semi-metallic phase (for t′ < 2t) with a pair of Dirac cones and a band insulator (for t′ > 2t) (Dietl et al., 2008; Esaki et al., 2009; Montambaux et al., 2009a,b; Pereira et al., 2009; Wunsch et al., 2008).”
• Creating, moving and merging Dirac points with a Fermi gas in a tunable honeycomb lattice (2011, background): “but that is extremely challenging to observe in solid”
• Energy gaps and a zero-field quantum Hall effect in graphene by strain engineering (2009, background): “The latter offers a tempting prospect of controlling graphene’s properties by strain and, recently, several reports have examined graphene under uniaxial deformation [4-8].”