Impurity and vacancy effects in graphene

Abstract

A Green function analysis has been developed for quasiparticle spectrum of a 2D graphene sheet in presence of different types of substitutional disorder, including vacancies. The anomalous character of impurity effects in this system is demonstrated, compared to those in well known doped semiconductors, and explained in terms of conical singularities in the band spectrum of pure graphene. The criteria for appearance of localized states on clusters of impurity scatterers and for qualitative restructuring of band spectrum are established and a possibility for a specific metal/insulator transition at presence of vacancies is indicated.