Electronic structure of Pb-intercalated graphene on Ir(111): an ab initio study

Abstract

Extending graphenes electronic properties beyond those intrinsically inherent to it is a great challenge of the contemporary condensed matter physics. In particular, because of graphene's extremely weak spin-orbit coupling, currently there is an intense research aiming at inducing pronounced spin-orbit effects in it [?, ?, ?]. We present the results of our ab initio study of the graphene on Ir(111), intercalated by a monolayer of Pb atoms. We discuss system's crystal and electronic structures, as well as spin texture and analyse the in uence of the intercalated Pb monolayer on the graphene π bands.