2023/06/08 by Ortiz, Ricardo · 2 citations
#FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.05346
I propose monoradical nanographenes without C3 symmetry as building blocks to design two-dimensional (2D) carbon crystals. As representative examples I study the honeycomb and Kagome lattices, showing that by replacing the sites with olympicene radicals the band dispersion near the Fermi energy corresponds, respectively, to that of Kekulé/anti-Kekulé graphene and breathing Kagome tight-binding models. As a consequence, finite islands of these new crystals present corner states close to the Fermi energy, just like the parent models. In the case of Kekulé/anti-Kekulé graphene, such states are topologically protected, standing as examples of second-order topological insulators with a non-zero Z2- or Z6-Berry phase. Differently, those of the breathing Kagome lattice are of trivial nature, but the ground state has been predicted to be a spin liquid in the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. Hence, 2D systems made of low-symmetric nanographenes may be convenient platforms to explore exotic physics in carbon materials.