Tunable many-body interactions in semiconducting graphene: Giant excitonic effect and strong optical absorption

Electronic and optical properties of graphene depend strongly on many-body interactions. Employing the highly accurate many-body perturbation approach based on Green's functions, we find a large renormalization over independent particle methods of the fundamental band gaps of semiconducting graphene structures with periodic defects. Additionally, their exciton binding energies are larger than 0.4 eV, suggesting significantly strengthened electron-electron and electron-hole interactions. Their absorption spectra show two strong peaks whose positions are sensitive to the defect fraction and distribution. The strong near-edge optical absorption and excellent tunability make these two-dimensional materials promising for optoelectronic applications.