Adittional levels between Landau bands due to vacancies in graphene: towards a defect engineering

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vacancies in graphene under magnetic fields create additional electronic levels and bands, potentially enabling defect engineering to control electronic properties and quantum Hall effects.

Contribution

It reveals how isolated and organized vacancies introduce new energy levels and bands between Landau levels, advancing defect engineering in graphene.

Findings

Vacancies create an extra level between Landau levels.

Vacancy lattices form an additional band with unique localization.

Vacancy-induced bands could lead to new Hall resistance plateaus.

Abstract

We describe the effects of vacancies on the electronic properties of a graphene sheet in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field: from a single defect to an organized vacancy lattice. An isolated vacancy is the minimal possible inner edge, showing an antidotlike behaviour, which results in an extra level between consecutive Landau levels. Two close vacancies may couple to each other, forming a vacancy molecule tuned by the magnetic field. We show that a vacancy lattice introduce an extra band in between Landau levels with localization properties that could lead to extra Hall resistance plateaus.