First-principles study on the structures and electronic properties of graphene-supported Ni<i><sub>n</sub></i> (<i>n </i>= 1–6) clusters SongWei WangJin-long WangBin HuWei-ping WangYing 2018 <p>The structural and electronic properties, such as adsorption energy, magnetic property, and charge-transferring process of Ni<i><sub>n</sub></i> (<i>n</i> = 1–6) clusters interacting with pristine, strained and defective graphene were investigated by using the density functional theory calculations with the Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof exchange-correlation energy functional. By introducing strain and defects, the stability of the cluster-graphene system was improved significantly. The magnetic moments increased monotonically for Ni<i><sub>n</sub></i> clusters on pristine and strained graphene while exhibited an oscillating behaviour for defective graphene. On the other hand, more charges being transferred from Ni<i><sub>n</sub></i> clusters to defective graphene were observed compared with pristine and strained graphene.</p>