  We investigated theoretically the effect of covalent edge functionalization,
with organic functional groups, on the electronic properties of graphene
nanostructures and nano-junctions. Our analysis shows that functionalization
can be designed to tune electron affinities and ionization potentials of
graphene flakes, and to control the energy alignment of frontier orbitals in
nanometer-wide graphene junctions. The stability of the proposed mechanism is
discussed with respect to the functional groups, their number as well as the
width of graphene nanostructures. The results of our work indicate that
different level alignments can be obtained and engineered in order to realize
stable all-graphene nanodevices.
