Unravelling the role of inelastic tunneling into pristine and defected graphene

Abstract: We present a first principles method for calculating the inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) on gated graphene. We reproduce experiments on pristine graphene and point out the importance of including several phonon modes to correctly estimate the local doping from IETS. We demonstrate how the IETS of typical imperfections in graphene can yield characteristic fingerprints revealing e.g. adsorbate species or local buckling. Our results show how care is needed when interpreting STM images of defects due to suppression of the elastic tunneling on graphene.