Title: Tailoring the electronic properties of freestanding graphene

When: Friday 14 October at 12h 00

Where: Sala de conferencias, módulo 00. Facultad de Ciencias

Abstract:

“Tailoring the electronic properties of freestanding graphene: An exemplary training ground for 2D materials”

One of the challenges of graphene exploitation is the tailoring of its electronic properties, to overcome the intrinsic limitation of this unique zero-gap material. In the present talk, the exploitation of fully-free-standing Nano Porous Graphene (NPG) as exemplary system is presented. NPG allows an efficient modification of the graphene electronic structure while keeping its excellent lattice quality. NPG is functionalised through two different paths: (i) atomic hydrogen (deuterium) bonding, obtaining an unprecedented hydrogen uptake with the formation of a wide band gap semiconductor (“graphane” [1]); (ii) alkali metal adsorption [2], achieving a much higher metallicity while maintaining the pristine band structure.

Experimental photoemission spectro-microscopy data are accompanied by ab-initio calculations for identifying the best configuration. The present research paves the way not only towards the effective formation of semiconducting “graphane” or more metallic graphene on large-scale samples, but also to stable graphene functionalisation enabling futuristic device applications [3] and to further 2D hetero-interfaces.

[1] Betti et al., Nano Letters 22, 2971 (2022); Abdelnabi et al., Nanomaterials 11, 130 (2021)
[2] Iacobucci et al., Nanotechnology 29, 405707 (2018); Betti et al., to be published
[3] Betti et al., Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 106, 120 (2019); Apponi et al., Phys. Rev. D, in press (2022)