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Pieces of graphene lattice made of patchwork particles. Since particles can be followed individually, defects can be studied at the particle scale. Image: Swinkels et al. CREDIT Swinkels et al

Abstract:
Graphene is the strongest of all materials. Additionally, it is excellent at conducting heat and electric current, making it one of the most special and versatile materials we know. For all these reasons, the discovery of graphene was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. However, many of the properties of the material and its cousins ​​are still poorly understood – for the simple reason that the atoms that make up it are so difficult to determine. observe. A team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam and New York University have now come up with a surprising way to solve this problem.

Graphene is growing – and we can see it

Amsterdam, Netherlands | Posted on March 24, 2023

Two-dimensional materials, consisting of a single layer of very thin atomic crystals, have attracted much attention recently. These well-deserved attention are mainly due to their unusual nature, very different from their three-dimensional ‘mass’ counterparts. Graphene, the best-known representative, and many other two-dimensional materials, are currently being intensively studied in laboratories. Perhaps surprisingly, it is important for the special nature of these materials to be deformed, locations where the crystal structure is imperfect. There, the orderly arrangement of atomic layers is disrupted and the coordination of atoms changes locally.

Visualize atoms
Despite the fact that defects have been shown to be critical to material properties, and they are almost always present or added on purpose, not much is known about how they form and how they evolve over time. The reason is simple: atoms are too small and moving too fast to follow them directly.

In an effort to make defects in graphene-like materials observable, a team of researchers, from the UvA-Institute of Physics and New York University, devised a way to create micrometer-sized models of graphene atoms. To achieve this, they use what are called ‘patchwork particles’. These particles – large enough to be easily seen in a microscope, but small enough to reproduce many of the properties of an actual atom – interact in the same coordination as the atoms in graphene, and form the same structure. The researchers build a model system and use it to gain insight into the defects, their formation and evolution over time. The results were published in Nature Communications this week.

Building graphene
Graphene is composed of carbon atoms which each have three neighbors, arranged in the well-known ‘honeycomb’ structure. It is this special structure that gives graphene its unique mechanical and electronic properties. To achieve the same structure in their model, the researchers used tiny particles made of polystyrene, decorated with three smaller parts of a material known as 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl – or TPM for short. The TPM patch configuration mimics the coordination of carbon atoms in a graphene lattice. The researchers then made interesting patches so the particles could form bonds with each other, again analogous to the carbon atoms in graphene.

After being allowed to stand for several hours, when observed under a microscope the ‘artificial carbon’ particles actually arranged themselves into a honeycomb lattice. The researchers then looked in more detail at the defects in the graphene model lattice. They observe that also in this case the model works: it exhibits a characteristic defect motif which is also known from atomic graphene. In contrast to native graphene, direct observation and long model building times now allow physicists to follow these defects from the very beginning of their formation, to their integration into the lattice.

Unexpected results
New insights into the growth of graphene-like materials soon led to new knowledge about these two-dimensional structures. Unexpectedly, the researchers found that the most common types of defects were formed in the very early stages of growth, when the lattice had not yet formed. They also observed how lattice mismatches were then ‘repaired’ by other defects, leading to stable, fixed configurations of defects or only slowly healing further to a more perfect lattice.

Thus, the model system not only makes it possible to rebuild graphene lattice on a larger scale for all kinds of applications, but direct observation also allows insight into the atomic dynamics in this class of materials. Since defects are at the core of the properties of all atom-thin materials, direct observation in these model systems helps further engineer atomic counterparts, for example for applications in ultralight materials and optical and electronic devices.

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Contact:
Laura Erdtsieck
University of Amsterdam

Office: 0031-205-252-695

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The news release publisher, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, is solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.

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