A perpendicular electric field applied to multilayers of graphene modifies the electronic structure near the $K$ point and may induce an energy gap in the electronic spectrum. This gap is tunable by the gate voltage and its size depends on the number of layers. We use a tight-binding approach to calculate the band structure and include a self-consistent calculation in order to obtain the density of charge carriers. Results are presented for systems consisting of three and four layers of graphene. The effect of the circular asymmetry of the band structure on the gap is critically examined.

• Received 18 September 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.79.035421