Electronic properties of stacking faults in Bernal graphite

Abstract

In spite of the last century of research into the physical properties of graphite, this material regularly displays new, unexpected features enabled by the variations of stacking between van der Waals coupled layers^1,2,3,4,5,6. Here, we show that a stacking fault in bulk graphite hosts a band of two-dimensional electrons clearly distinguishable from the bulk carriers. Using a self-consistent tight-binding model of graphite, incorporating all Slonczewski-Weiss-McClure parameters, we compute the dispersion and quantum topological characteristics of the two dimensional band, we calculate the Landau level spectrum in magnetic field and the related Shubnikov-de Haas oscillation parameters, as well as the cyclotron mass of the two-dimensional carriers. We also show that most of the features of the fault-bound states are inherited from another celebrated graphitic system, rhombohedral trilayer graphene⁷, which represents the central structural block of the stacking fault.