Chemical vapour deposition enables large-domain growth of ideal graphene, yet many applications of graphene require the controlled inclusion of specific defects. We present a one-step chemical vapour deposition procedure aimed at retaining the precursor topology when incorporated into the grown carbonaceous film. When azupyrene, the molecular analogue of the Stone-Wales defect in graphene, is used as a precursor, carbonaceous monolayers with a range of morphologies are produced as a function of the copper substrate growth temperature. The higher the substrate temperature during deposition, the closer the resulting monolayer is to ideal graphene. Analysis, with a set of complementary materials characterisation techniques, reveals morphological changes closely correlated with changes in the atomic adsorption heights, network topology, and concentration of 5-/7-membered carbon rings. The engineered defective carbon monolayers can be transferred to different substrates, potentially enabling applications in nanoelectronics, sensorics, and catalysis.
@article{arxiv.2411.02676,
title = {One-step synthesis of graphene containing topological defects},
author = {Benedikt P. Klein and Matthew A. Stoodley and Joel Deyerling and Luke A. Rochford and Dylan B. Morgan and David Hopkinson and Sam Sullivan-Allsop and Fulden Eratam and Lars Sattler and Sebastian M. Weber and Gerhard Hilt and Alexander Generalov and Alexei Preobrajenski and Thomas Liddy and Leon B. S. Williams and Tien-Lin Lee and Alex Saywell and Roman Gorbachev and Sarah J. Haigh and Christopher Allen and Willi Auwärter and Reinhard J. Maurer and David A. Duncan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.02676},
year = {2024}
}