Structural and electronic properties of AB- and AA-stacking bilayer-graphene intercalated by Li, Na, Ca, B, Al, Si, Ge, Ag, and Au atoms

The structural and electronic properties of X (=Li, Na, Ca, B, Al, Si, Ge, Ag, and Au)-intercalated AB- and AA-stacking bilayer-graphene have been investigated by using ab initio density functional theory. It is shown that Boron (Lithium)-intercalated system is energetically more stable than the others for the AB (AA) stacking bilayer-graphene systems. The structural parameters, electronic band structures, and orbital nature of actual interactions are studied for the relaxed stable geometries. It is seen that the higher the binding energy, the smaller is the distance between the layers, in these systems. The electronic band structures for these systems show that different intercalated atoms can change the properties of bilayer-graphene differently. For qualitative description of the electronic properties, the metallicities of the systems are also calculated and compared with each other. The Mulliken analysis and electron density maps clearly indicate that the interactions inside a single layer (intralayer interactions) are strong and highly covalent, while the interactions between the two layers (interlayer interactions) are much weaker.