Phonon Dispersions of Graphene from Unzipping Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

We calculate the phonon spectra of chiral single-walled carbon nanotubes and graphene within a mass and spring model which includes up to third neighbour interactions together with a radial bond-bending interaction. Firstly, the classical Hamiltonian for lattice vibrations of chiral single-walled carbon nanotubes is derived and then it is quantized. The resultant Hamiltonian is diagonalized under a unitary transformation scheme to obtain phonon modes as a function of momentum vector. Using resolvent formalism we analytically obtain phonon dispersions of these structures. We show that our calculated results for chiral SWCNTs reproduce well the results found for achiral SWCNTs. Finally, we introduce an unzipping technique to obtain full analytical phonon dispersion curves of graphene using phonon dispersions of chiral SWCNTs. We compare our analytical results for the phonon dispersions of graphene to the available experimental data and show that they agree well with the experiment. Our analytical results not only provide a basis for understanding phonon dispersions of carbon nanotubes, but also illuminate the bare phonon structure of graphene.