Structural and properties of graphene nanobelts rolled up into spiral by a single graphene sheet

Abstract

Graphene nanobelts (GNBs) as a new class of quasi two dimensional materials that have attracted much research interest in the last few years. Nanobelts are known to show excellent field emission characteristics. On the other hand the scrolled configurations such as graphene nanobelts configuration indicate more stable (in terms of energy) than their equivalent planar configurations such as nanoribbon, nanotube. In this article, modelling of nanobelts (proposed schematic of nanobelts perfect scroll-like Archimedean spirals) energy band structure and bandgap dependency on chiral vector (C) over right arrow and length of nanobelts (L) (structural parameter) is reported. The third nearest-neighbour binding analysis is used to derive energy ban structure model of GNBs. Our results show that the effect of structural parameters and chirality number have great influence on bandgap. In addition the critical values of L and chiral number as important factors in order to illustrate electronic structures and properties of GNBs are investigated.