Energy Band Structure of Graphite

Abstract

The energy band structure of graphite is described in the region of the Fermi surfaces by the Slonczewski-Weiss model. The electron and hole Fermi surfaces are highly elongated and are aligned along the six Brillouin zone edges which are parallel to the trigonal axis of the crystal. The energy is a non-parabolic function of wavenumber and the Fermi surfaces are not ellipsoids. Galvanomagnetic, de Haas-van Alphen, and other experiments have established that: the band overlap is about 0.03 to 0.04 eV, the carrier densities of electrons and holes are each about 3 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">18</sup> cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−3</sup> at low temperatures, the effective masses perpendicular to the trigonal axis are about 0.04 m <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</inf> for electrons and 0.06 m <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</inf> for holes, and the length-to-width ratio of the Fermi surfaces is about 12. The only important effect not included in the Slonczewski-Weiss model is the correlation of electron motion due to the coulomb interaction. Though this effect is expected to be important a priori, it is not yet clear if it causes important discrepancies between the predictions of the model and the experimental results.