Electronic properties of monolayer silicon carbide nanoribbons using tight-binding approach

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a binary carbon-silicon compound. In its two-dimensional form, monolayer SiC is composed of a monolayer carbon and silicon atoms constructed as a honeycomb lattice. SiC has recently been receiving increasing attention from researchers owing to its intriguing electronic properties. In this present work, SiC nanoribbons (SiCNRs) are modelled and simulated to obtain accurate electronic properties, which can further guide fabrication processes, through bandgap engineering. The primary objective of this work is to obtain the electronic properties of monolayer SiCNRs by applying numerical computation methods using nearest-neighbour tight-binding models. Hamiltonian operator discretization and approximation of plane wave are assumed for the models and simulation by applying the basis function. The computed electronic properties include the band structures and density of states of monolayer SiCNRs of varying width. Furthermore, the properties are compared with those of graphene nanoribbons. The bandgap of ASiCNR as a function of width are also benchmarked with published DFT-GW and DFT-GGA data. Our nearest neighbour tight-binding (NNTB) model predicted data closer to the calculations based on the standard DFT-GGA and underestimated the bandgap values projected from DFT-GW, which takes in account the exchange-correlation energy of many-body effects.