Title
Implanting Germanium into Graphene
Author
Alexander Markevich
School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham
Roman Böttger
Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf
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Abstract
Incorporating heteroatoms into the graphene lattice may be used to tailor its electronic, mechanical and chemical properties, although directly observed substitutions have thus far been limited to incidental Si impurities and P, N and B dopants introduced using low-energy ion implantation. We present here the heaviest impurity to date, namely 74Ge+ ions implanted into monolayer graphene. Although sample contamination remains an issue, atomic resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy imaging and quantitative image simulations show that Ge can either directly substitute single atoms, bonding to three carbon neighbors in a buckled out-of-plane configuration, or occupy an in-plane position in a divacancy. First-principles molecular dynamics provides further atomistic insight into the implantation process, revealing a strong chemical effect that enables implantation below the graphene displacement threshold energy. Our results demonstrate that heavy atoms can be implanted into the graphene lattice, pointing a way toward advanced applications such as single-atom catalysis with graphene as the template.
Keywords
heteroatom dopingion implantationmolecular dynamicsscanning transmission electron microscopy
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
Appeared in
Title
ACS Nano
Volume
12
Issue
5
From page
4641
To page
4647
Publication
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Version type
Date available
2019-05-05
Date accepted
2018
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