While crystalline two-dimensional materials have become an experimental reality during the past few years, an amorphous 2-D material has not been reported before. Here, using electron irradiation we create an sp2-hybridized one-atom-thick flat carbon membrane with a random arrangement of polygons, including four-membered carbon rings. We show how the transformation occurs step-by-step by nucleation and growth of low-energy multi-vacancy structures constructed of rotated hexagons and other polygons. Our observations, along with first-principles calculations, provide new insights to the bonding behavior of carbon and dynamics of defects in graphene. The created domains possess a band gap, which may open new possibilities for engineering graphene-based electronic devices.
@article{arxiv.1102.0174,
title = {From Point Defects in Graphene to Two-Dimensional Amorphous Carbon},
author = {J. Kotakoski and A. V. Krasheninnikov and U. Kaiser and J. C. Meyer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.0174},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
10 pages, 10 figures including supplementary information