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  • Open Access

Electronic structure of multilayer graphene with arbitrary stackings

Fred Sun*

Jia-An Yan†

  • BASIS Independent Silicon Valley, 1290 Parkmoor Ave, San Jose, California 95126, USA

  • Department of Physics, Astronomy, and Geosciences, Towson University, 8000 York Road, Towson, Maryland 21252, USA

  • *Contact author: fredsunqiushi@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: jiaanyan@gmail.com
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APS Open Sci. 1, 000009 – Published 29 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9z9c-lbzk

Abstract

Stacking geometry in multilayer graphene (MLG) provides an interesting degree of freedom to engineer its electronic structure near the Fermi level, wherein the linear bands in single layer graphene could retain or evolve into parabolic or flat bands. Using a tight-binding model, we carried out a detailed analytical analysis of the electronic band structures for arbitrarily stacked MLGs. We show that their low-energy band dispersions near the Fermi level may be deduced from its substacks in isolation. The analytical solutions of the momenta with zero eigenvalue for an AA stacking allow us to generalize the results of the zero-energy momenta for arbitrarily stacked MLGs. Moreover, we find that an interplay of parallel and rhombohedral stacking allows for flat band engineering and enhancement in arbitrarily stacked MLG. The existence of enhanced flat bands in our discussed arbitrarily stacked MLGs might offer another interesting platform for exploring the flat band physics and possible flat band properties, like superconductivity, in graphene systems beyond the twisted bilayer graphene and simpler stacking orders.

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APS Open Sci. 1, 000009– Published 29 April, 2026
Vol. 1
  • Received 4 November 2025
  • Accepted 26 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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