Band-gap engineering in fluorographene nanoribbons under uniaxial strain

Based on extensive first-principles calculations, we report the structural and electronic properties of fluorinated graphene, i.e., fluorographene nanoribbons (FGNRs) under uniaxial strain. Our results indicate that the FGNRs are semiconductors with wide direct band gaps regardless of their edge structures. Moreover, the band gap of FGNR can be effectively modulated nonlinearly with the applied uniaxial elastic strain, where the band gap value increases first and then reduces when the applied strain changes from -10.0% to 10.0%. This abnormal behavior mainly originates from the electronic structures of valence and conduction band edges, which is quite different from previously reported linear behavior on graphene nanoribbon. Our results imply the great potential applications of FGNRs in the optical electronics. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.