Electronic and magnetic properties of pristine and hydrogenated borophene nanoribbons

The groundbreaking works in graphene and graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) over the past decade, and the very recent discovery of borophene naturally draw attention to the yet-to-be-explored borophene nanoribbons (BNRs). We herein report a density functional theory (DFT) study of the electronic and magnetic properties of BNRs. The foci are the impact of orientation (denoted as BxNRs and ByNRs with their respective periodic orientations along x- and y-axis), ribbon width (N_x, N_y=4–15), and hydrogenation effects on the geometric, electronic and magnetic properties of BNRs. We found that the anisotropic quasi-planar geometric structure of BNR and the edge states largely govern its electronic and magnetic properties. In particular, pristine ByNRs adopt a magnetic ground state, either anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) or ferromagnetic (FM) depending on the ribbon width, while pristine BxNRs are non-magnetic (NM). Upon hydrogenation, all BNRs exhibit NM. Interestingly, both pristine and hydrogenated ByNRs undergo a metal-semiconductor-metal transition at N_y=7, while all BxNRs remain metallic.