Modeling of gas adsorption on graphene nanoribbons

We present a theory to study gas molecules adsorption on armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) by applying the results of ab initio calculations to the single-band tight-binding approximation. In addition, the effect of edge states on the electronic properties of AGNR is included in the calculations. Under the assumption that the gas molecules adsorb on the ribbon sites with uniform probability distribution, the applicability of the method is examined for finite concentrations of adsorption of several simple gas molecules (CO, NO, CO(2), NH(3)) on 10-AGNR. We show that the states contributed by the adsorbed CO and NO molecules are quite localized near the center of original band gap and suggest that the charge transport in such systems cannot be enhanced considerably, while CO(2) and NH(3) molecules adsorption acts as acceptor and donor, respectively. The results of this theory at low gas concentration are in good agreement with those obtained by density-functional theory calculations. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3409870]