We employ a semi-classical Langevin approach to study current-induced atomic dynamics in a partially dehydrogenated armchair graphene nanoribbon. All parameters are obtained from density functional theory. The dehydrogenated carbon dimers behave as effective impurities, whose motion decouples from the rest of carbon atoms. The electrical current can couple the dimer motion in a coherent fashion...

Electrons carry both charge and spin. The processing of information in conventional electronic devices is based only on the electronic charge. Spin electronics, or spintronics, uses the spin of electrons as another degree of freedom [1]. Materials with zero band gap form the basis for spintronic devices and show superior performance in comparison with non-zero band gap materials [1]. Graphene, ...

Edge structures of thermally treated graphite have been studied by means of atomically resolved high-resolution TEM. The method for the determination of a monolayer or more than one layer graphene sheets is established. A series of tilting experiments proves that the zigzag and armchair edges are mostly closed between adjacent graphene layers, and the number of dangling bonds is therefore minim...

We report a first-principles study of hydrogen storage media consisting of calcium atoms and graphene-based nanostructures. We find that Ca atoms prefer to be individually adsorbed on the zigzag edge of graphene with a Ca-Ca distance of 10 A without clustering of the Ca atoms, and up to six H(2) molecules can bind to a Ca atom with a binding energy of approximately 0.2 eV/H(2). A Ca-decorated z...

Utilizing first-principles theory, we demonstrate that half-metallicity can be realized in a junction composed of non-magnetic armchair graphene nanoribbon (AGNR) and ferromagnetic Ni electrodes. The half-metallic property originates from the AGNR energy gap of the up spin located at the Fermi energy, while large electronic states are generated for the down spin. By altering the interlayer dist...

Using density functional theory calculations, we compute the edge energies and stresses for edges of SiC and BN nanoribbons, and the boundary energies and stresses for domain boundaries of graphene-BN superlattices. SiC and BN armchair nanoribbons show pronounced edge relaxations, which obliterate the threefold oscillatory behavior of the edge stress reported for graphene. Our calculations show...

The indirect exchange interaction is one of the key factors in determining the overall alignment of magnetic impurities embedded in metallic host materials. In this work we examine the range of this interaction in magnetically doped graphene systems in the presence of armchair edges using a combination of analytical and numerical Green function approaches. We consider both a semi-infinite sheet...

We describe a simple graphene nanoribbon and bottom gate system and present numerical algorithms for solving Poisson’s and Thomas–Fermi equations for electrons in the graphene nanoribbon. The Poisson’s equation is solved using finite difference and finite element methods. Using the Poisson and Thomas–Fermi equations we calculate an electrostatic potential and surface electron density in the gra...

A process for fabricating dense graphene nanoribbon arrays using self-assembled patterns of block copolymers on graphene grown epitaxially on SiC on the wafer scale has been developed. Etching masks comprising long and straight nanoribbon array structures with linewidths as narrow as 10 nm were fabricated, and the patterns were transferred to graphene. Our process combines both top-down and sel...