From graphene to graphite: Electronic structure around the<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>K</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>point

Abstract

Within a tight-binding approach we investigate how the electronic structure evolves from a single graphene layer into bulk graphite by computing the band structure of one, two, and three layers of graphene. It is well known that a single graphene layer is a zero-gap semiconductor with a linear Dirac-like spectrum around the Fermi energy, while graphite shows a semimetallic behavior with a band overlap of about $41\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{meV}$. In contrast to a single graphene layer, we show that two graphene layers have a parabolic spectrum around the Fermi energy and are a semimetal like graphite; however, the band overlap of $0.16\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{meV}$ is extremely small. Three and more graphene layers show a clear semimetallic behavior. For 11 and more layers the difference in band overlap with graphite is smaller than 10%.