Electronic and Transport Properties of Boron-Doped Graphene Nanoribbons

Abstract

We report a spin polarized density functional theory study of the electronic and transport properties of graphene nanoribbons doped with boron atoms. We considered hydrogen terminated graphene (nano)ribbons with width up to 3.2 nm. The substitutional boron atoms at the nanoribbon edges (sites of lower energy) suppress the metallic bands near the Fermi level, giving rise to a semiconducting system. These substitutional boron atoms act as scattering centers for the electronic transport along the nanoribbons. We find that the electronic scattering process is spin-anisotropic; namely, the spin-down (up) transmittance channels are weakly (strongly) reduced by the presence of boron atoms. Such anisotropic character can be controlled by the width of the nanoribbon; thus, the spin-up and spin-down transmittance can be tuned along the boron-doped nanoribbons.

Chemical Vapor Deposition of N-Doped Graphene and Carbon Films: The Role of Precursors and Gas Phase

“…Thus, doping of graphene with heteroelements like boron (B) or nitrogen (N), which fit into the carbon lattice, is an important issue. Theoretical and experimental studies indicate that B-or N-doped graphenes reveal p-or n-type semiconductor characteristics [15][16][17] accompanied by a band gap opening [18][19][20] and thus doped 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 graphene and structurally related graphene nanoribbons are considered as promising materials with tunable electronic properties. 21,22 N-Doped graphene, and particularly B-doped graphene are still scarcely investigated experimentally as compared to graphene 23 and graphene oxide.…”

Elastic properties of hybrid graphene/boron nitride monolayer

“…Substituting C with B and N atoms in graphene has been shown to be a promising way to improve semiconducting properties of the graphene [2,3,4]. Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) monolayer [5] and graphene have similar 2D lattice structures but with very different physical properties.…”

An ab initio study on energy gap of bilayer graphene nanoribbons with armchair edges

“…In order to keep the high performance, doped source and drain in field effect transistors are required. GNRs provide the possibility to substitute the edge carbon atoms with either boron or nitrogen which will lead to a p-type or n-type doped semiconductor, respectively 12,13,16 . Apart from monolayer GNRs, recent experimental [17][18][19] and theoretical 20 studies are also carried out based on bilayer graphene and they show that bilayer graphene has unique features such as anomalous integer quantum Hall effects 17 and the ability to control the size of E g by adjusting carrier concentration 18 as well as by an external electric field 19 .…”