Flat bands and electronic localization in twisted bilayer graphene nanoribbons

We analyze the electronic structure of twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) nanoribbons close to the magic angle. We describe a transition from an incomplete to a complete moire structure. By considering zigzag and armchair edge terminations, the low-energy bands are strongly modified, and thus, the edge flat-band localization is sensitive to the type of boundary. By means of a scaled tight-binding model, we calculate the band structure and find that, for an armchair configuration, an incomplete moire edge suppresses the edge localization, while for a zigzag configuration, we find a strong interference of the edge states with the moire bands. In particular, for the armchair termination, we observe a competition between the ribbon periodicity and the graphene monolayers, which we describe with a potential well toy model. Furthermore, for ribbons with widths of multiple moire cells, the flat bands of the moires in the bulk are unperturbed as we change the borders. These results are explained in terms of the strong electronic localization, nearly Gaussian, in the AA stacking regions, as confirmed by an inverse participation ratio analysis. Our results demonstrate that the electronic structure of TBG nanoribbons is sensitive to the edge termination, offering an explanation for recent experimental results.