Impurity effects on Dirac modes in graphene armchair nanoribbons

Abstract

The authors explore in detail impurity effects on arm-chair graphene nanoribbons. While limited to the framework of the Anderson hybrid model of impurity perturbations, the study reveals the possibility for Mott localization and for opening of a mobility gap under appropriate fine-tuning of the impurity energy level, its hybridization with the Dirac modes of the host material, and the impurity concentration. Special attention is dedicated to the interplay of disorder with the spin splitting of the energy spectrum of the host, caused by the Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The approach can be extended to account for further relevant effects such as electron-electron Hubbard correlations, spin-ordering effects, phonon and magnon quasiparticles, etc.