The electronic shell and supershell structure of triangular graphene quantum dots has been studied using density functional and tight-binding methods. The density functional calculations demonstrate that the electronic structure close to the Fermi energy is correctly described with a simple tight-binding model, where only the $p_z$ orbitals perpendicular to the graphene layer are included. The results show that (i) both at the bottom and at the top of the $p_z$ band, a supershell structure similar to that of free electrons confined in a triangular cavity is seen, (ii) close to the Fermi level, the shell structure is that of free massless particles, (iii) triangles with armchair edges show an additional sequence of levels (“ghost states”) absent for triangles with zigzag edges while the latter exhibit edge states, and (iv) the observed shell structure is rather insensitive to the edge roughness.

• Received 20 March 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.77.193410