Highly defective graphene: A key prototype of two-dimensional Anderson insulators

• DOI: 10.1007/s12274-013-0309-7
• Publication Date: 2013-04-11T21:45:18Z
• Authors: Aurélien Lherbier; Stephan Roche; Oscar A. Restrepo; Yann-Michel Niquet; Arnaud Delcorte; Jean-Christophe C...
• Keywords: Electronic transport; 0103 physical sciences; Anderson insulators; 02 engineering and technology; Graphene; 0210 nano-technology; 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences

Electronic structure and transport properties of highly defective two-dimensional (2D) sp2 graphene are investigated theoretically. Classical molecular dynamics are used to generate large graphene planes containing a considerable amount of defects. Then, a tight-binding Hamiltonian validated by ab initio calculations is constructed in order to compute quantum transport within a real-space order-N Kubo-Greenwood approach. In contrast to pristine graphene, the highly defective sp2 carbon sheets exhibit a high density of states at the charge neutrality point raising challenging questions concerning the electronic transport of associated charge carriers. The analysis of the electronic wavepacket dynamics actually reveals extremely strong multiple scattering effects giving rise to mean free paths as low as 1 nm and localization phenomena. Consequently, highly defective graphene is envisioned as a remarkable prototype of 2D Anderson insulating materials. © 2013 Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.<br/>J. -C. C., A. D., and A. L. acknowledge financial support from the Belgium FNRS. S. R. acknowledges the Spanish Ministry for financial support through the project MAT2012-33911. This work is connected to the ARC Graphene Nano-electromechanics (N.° 11/16-037), the ETSF e-I3 project (N.° 211956), and the NANOSIMGRAPHENE (ANR-09-NANO-016-01).<br/>Peer Reviewed<br/>