Electronic Structure of Two Dimensional Germanene Crystals. Issue 1 (20th April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shi, Weilin; Gu, Weixia; Ma, Xiying
• Is Part Of: Emerging materials research. Volume 5:Issue 1(2016)
• Publication Date: 2016-04-20
• Subjects: Materials -- Periodicals; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1680/jemmr.15.00027
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2046-0147

Abstract

Abstract : Two-dimensional (2D) germanene crystals, the counterpart of graphene with Honeycomb structure, will be an alternative semiconductor material for the next-generation nanoelectronic applications. In this study, we calculated the electronic structure, energy band gap, and electron density of germanene using the tight-binding approach and analyzed the results of the calculation. We firstly developed the model based on the tight-binding theory, then calculated the electronic structure of germanene. We obtained the three-dimensional energy band structure in the first Brillouin zone for germanene, which has an open energy gap up to 128 meV at the Dirac points K and K'. This open gap shows that germanene is a non-metallic insulator. The first Brillouin zone is almost three times larger than that of graphene because germanene has a larger lattice constant (3.95 Å). The electron density quickly decreases with radial direction, while the density is larger in the center of the Brillouin zone in the angular direction.