Some of the most promising materials for future technologies are available in layers, only one atom thickness graph, e.g. While hundreds of such materials exist, it has remained a challenge to really merge them. Most efforts simply stack these atomic thin leaves like a card game, but the layers usually lack a significant interaction between them.
An international team of researchers under the direction of Rice University material scientists has managed to create a real 2D hybrid by integrating two fundamentally different 2D materials ⎯ graphs and pebbles ⎯ into a single stable connection called GiLAHNE.
“The layers not only rest on each other ⎯ electrons and form new interactions and vibration states, which leads to real estate, neither the material itself has,” said Sathvik Iyengar, doctoral student at Rice and a first author of the study.
It is even more important, as Iyengar explained that the method could apply to a variety of 2D materials and enables the development of designer 2D hybrids for electronics, photonics and quantum devices of the next generation.
“It opens the door to combine completely new classes from 2D materials-B. Metals with insulators or magnets with semiconductors-to create tailor-made materials from scratch,” said Iyengar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wywycnhiam
Animation that represents the collective vibration stimulation of glaphen: Interactions in the hybrid material go beyond conventionally observed 2D shifting pile. (With the kind permission of Sathvik Iyengar/Rice University)
The team developed a two -stage single reaction method for growing glapher using a liquid chemical forerunner that contains both silicon and carbon. By setting the oxygen level while heating, you first grew to be graphed to move the conditions to promote the formation of a silicon dioxide layer. This required a custom-made high-temperature deep pressure device, which was designed over several months in cooperation with Anchal Srivastava, a visiting professor at Banaras Hindu University in India.
“This setup made the synthesis possible,” said Iyengar. “The resulting material is a real hybrid with new electronic and structural properties.”
As soon as the material was synthesized, the Rice team worked on confirming its structure with Manoj Tripathi and Alan Dalton at the University of Sussex. One of the first clues that Glaphene was something new came from an anomaly. When the team analyzed the material using the Raman spectroscopy ⎯ a technique that determines how atoms vibrate by measuring subtle shifts in the scattered laser light. ⎯ found signals that exceeded neither graphs nor silicon dioxide. These unexpected vibration features indicated a deeper interaction between the layers.
In most 2D material stacks, the layers simply sit on the spot and sticks out weakly like magnets on a refrigerator door. But in Glaphen, the layers block much more than so -called weak van of the Waals bonds, so that electrons can flow between them and lead completely new behaviors.
To further examine, Iyengar Marcos Pimmenta, a spectroscopy expert in Brazil, consulted Brazil. Ultimately, it turned out that the anomaly was an artifact. An important memory, said Iyengar, that even reproducible results must be treated with caution.
In order to better understand how the bound layers behave at the nuclear level, the team worked with Vincent Meunier at Pennsylvania State University to verify the experimental results against quanta simulations. These confirmed that the graphic and silica stories interact in a unique way and sometimes divide electrons across the interface. This hybrid binding changes the structure and behavior of the material and transforms a metal and an insulation into a new type of semiconductor.
“This was not something that could only do one laboratory,” said Iyengar, who recently spent a year in Japan as a fellow of the Japan Society for the Funding of Science (JSPS), and also as the first recipient of the Quad scholarship, a program that was researched by the rules of the United States, India, Australia and Japan to support the early career as a scientist Science, politics and the tender, the global stages and the global stages. “This research was a continental effort to create and understand a material nature.”
Pulickel Ajayan, Rice Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of engineering and professor of materials sciences and nanoengineering said that the discovery of glaphen is important in itself, but research is really exciting, the broader method that introduces a new platform for a chemical combination of fundamentally different 2D materials.
Research reflects a guiding principle that Iyengar says that he inherited from his consultant.
“Since I started my doctorate, my consultant encouraged me to explore the mixture of ideas, to mix the other hesitation,” he said, quoting Ajayan, who is a corresponding author of the study alongside Meunier. “Professor Ajayan also said that real innovation takes place at the crossings of the hesitation. This is proof of this.”
Research was supported by the Quad Fellowship program; The Rice-Penn State Collaborative Project (FA9550-23-1-0447) financed by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-23-1-0447); The Graduate Research Fellowship Program of the National Science Foundation (2236422); The Sussex Strategy Development Fund; Instituto de ciência e tecnologia de nanomateriais de carbono; Fundação de amparo à pesquisa do estado de minas gerais; And the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. The content of this is only the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily show the official views of the financing organizations and institutions.
Iyengar, Srivastava, Meunier and Ajayan are interested in pursuing intellectual property, and a preliminary application for this technology was submitted.
- Peer-review paper:
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Glaphen: hybridization of 2D pebbles and graphs | Advanced materials | DOI: 10.1002/Adma.202419136
author
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202419136