Optimal thickness for charge transfer in multilayer graphene electrodes

Abstract

We study the charge transfer in multilayer graphene from first principles. We find that highly oriented (Bernal) and misoriented (turbostratic) multilayers show similar charge distributions despite their different electronic structure. We quantify the charge transfer and doping distribution in turbostratic graphene layers, where the screening is affected by vanishing density of states near the Fermi level. The results are in good agreement with an analytic model accounting for the electrostatic interaction and the band filling and point out the importance of system-specific interactions between the surface and the first layer. We find that graphene is an outstanding material for ultrathin electrodes, as most of the benefits of multilayer graphene can be captured with bilayers.