Band structures of graphene nanoscrolls and their dispersion relation near the Fermi point

Abstract

In recent years, graphene nanoscrolls (GNSs) belonging to the family of carbon-based materials have attracted the attention of researchers due to their exceptional electrical and physical properties. It has been found that the scrolled configurations of graphene indicate higher stability in terms of their structure, as opposed to their counterpart planar-configuration carbon nanotubes. We studied the physical structure and band structure of different types of graphene nanoscrolls. The energy dispersion relation of graphene nanoscrolls is determined using the tight-binding (TB) model. The electronic structures of nanoscrolls are significantly dependent on the chirality number (n,m). Armchair nanoscrolls are metallic or semi-metallic depending on their spiral length, and metallic nanoscrolls have a large energy gap at the Fermi level. Zigzag nanoscrolls are small bandgap semiconductors when (n − 1) is a multiple of 3, otherwise, they are semiconductors with an observable energy gap at the Fermi point. Moreover, the energy band structure of GNSs near the Fermi point for both parabolic and non-parabolic bands is investigated.