Absolutely continuous energy bands and extended electronic states in an aperiodic comb-shaped nanostructure

Abstract

The nature of electronic eigenstates and quantum transport in a comb-shaped Fibonacci nanostructure model is investigated within a tight-binding framework. Periodic linear chains are side-attached to a Fibonacci chain, giving it the shape of an aperiodic comb. The effect of the side-attachments on the usual Cantor set energy spectrum of a Fibonacci chain is analyzed using the Greens function technique. A special correlation between the coupling of the side-attached chain with the Fibonacci chain and the inter-atomic coupling of the Fibonacci chain results in a dramatic triggering of the fragmented Cantor set energy spectrum into multiple sets of continuous sub-bands of extended eigenstates. The result is valid even for a disordered comb and turns out to be a rare exception of the conventional Anderson localization problem. The electronic transport thus can be made selectively ballistic within desired energy regimes. The number and the width of such continuous sub-bands can be easily controlled by tuning the number of atomic sites in the side-coupled periodic linear chains. This gives us a scope of proposing such aperiodic nanostructures as potential candidates for prospective energy selective nanoscale filtering devices.