Crown Graphene Nanomeshes: Highly Stable Chelation-Doped Semiconducting Materials

Graphene nanomeshes (GNMs) formed by the creation of pore superlattices in graphene are a possible route to graphene-based electronics due to their semiconducting properties, including the emergence of fractional electronvolt band gaps. The utility of GNMs would be markedly increased if a scheme to stably, and controllably dope them was developed. In this work, a chemically motivated approach to GNM doping based on selective pore perimeter passivation and subsequent ion chelation is proposed. It is shown by first-principles calculations that ion chelation leads to stable doping of the passivated GNMs both n- and p-doping are achieved within a rigid band picture. Such chelated or crown GNM structures are stable, high mobility semiconducting materials possessing intrinsic doping concentration control; these can serve as building blocks for edge free graphene nanoelectronics including GNM-based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-type logic switches.