The importance of defects for carbon nanoribbon based electronics

The utilization of graphene nanoribbons for next generation nanoelectronics is commonly expected to depend on the controlled synthesis that yields a low density of defects. Edge roughness and vacancies have been shown to have a large impact on the performance of graphene nanoribbon transistors. In contrast, we show how certain defects can be used to enhance the electronic and magnetic properties of graphene nanoribbons. We explore the properties of hybrid graphene nanoribbons with armchair and zigzag features joined by an array of pentagon-heptagon structural defects. The graphene nanoribbons display an increased density of states at the Fermi level, and half metallicity in absence of external fields.