Data / Hora
Date(s) - 15/06/2023
17:00 - 18:00
Categorias
Ferromagnetism in armchair graphene nanoribbon topological heterostructures
George Martins, Physics Institute, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
15/06/2022 – 5ª. feira – Sala 776L – 17h
We study the properties of flat-bands that appear in a heterostructure composed of strands of different widths of graphene armchair nanoribbons. One of the flat-bands is reminiscent of the one that appears in pristine armchair nanoribbons and has its origin in a quantum mechanical destructive interference effect, dubbed `Wannier orbital states’ by Lin et al. in Phys. Rev. B 79, 035405 (2009). The additional flat bands present in the heterostructure, some reasonably closer to the Fermi level, seem to be generated by a similar interference process.
After doing a thorough tight-binding analysis of the band structures of the different kinds of heterostructures, focusing in the properties of the flat-bands, we use Density Functional Theory to study the possibility of magnetic ground states when placing, through doping, the Fermi energy close to the different flat-bands. Our DFT results confirmed the expectation that these heterostructures, after being appropriately hole-doped, develop a ferromagnetic ground state that seems to require, as in the case of pristine armchair nanoribbons, the presence of a dispersive band crossing the flat-band. Currently, we are in the process of exploring different heterostructures to define which ones present more robust magnetism. In addition, we found a remarkable agreement between the tight-binding and DFT results for the charge density distribution of the so-called Wannier orbital states. Finally, it should be noted that some of these heterostructures were experimentally shown to have a topologically non-trivial ground state with a finite value for the winding number associated to the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger dimerized chain [Nature 560, 209 (2018)].