Strain-controlled interface engineering of binding and charge doping at metal-graphene contacts

Strain effects on tuning the interface binding as well as the charge doping at metal-graphene contacts have been investigated by using density functional theory calculations. A realizable tensile strain is found to be very effective in enhancing the interface binding as well as shifting the Fermi level. Particularly, an enhancement of the binding energy up to 315 can be achieved because of the dipole-dipole interaction. Our results presented here show that strain is an efficient way to overcome the weak binding problem at metal-graphene interface, and will motivate active experimental efforts in improving the performance of graphene-based devices.