期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2010
卷号:107
期号:34
页码:14999-15004
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1004595107
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:The massless Dirac spectrum of electrons in single-layer graphene has been thoroughly studied both theoretically and experimentally. Although a subject of considerable theoretical interest, experimental investigations of the richer electronic structure of few-layer graphene (FLG) have been limited. Here we examine FLG graphene crystals with Bernal stacking of layer thicknesses N = 1,2,3,...8 prepared using the mechanical exfoliation technique. For each layer thickness N, infrared conductivity measurements over the spectral range of 0.2-1.0 eV have been performed and reveal a distinctive band structure, with different conductivity peaks present below 0.5 eV and a relatively flat spectrum at higher photon energies. The principal transitions exhibit a systematic energy-scaling behavior with N. These observations are explained within a unified zone-folding scheme that generates the electronic states for all FLG materials from that of the bulk 3D graphite crystal through imposition of appropriate boundary conditions. Using the Kubo formula, we find that the complete infrared conductivity spectra for the different FLG crystals can be reproduced reasonably well within the framework a tight-binding model.