Sinuous grain boundaries in graphene demystified

The January 21 issue of Adv. Funct. Mater. features on its back cover work on graphene grain boundaries

The image shows a simulated grain boundary stitching two graphene domains tilted at a 28° angle exhibits a well-defined sinuous shape, which is revealed to be energetically preferred. Such sinuous grain boundary, appeared to be a curved river on land, are highlighted by B. I. Yakobson and co-workers on page 367 as a new channel to explore novel electronic behavior in graphene and to reach the as yet unexplored flatlands of two-dimensional materials.

2D Phosphorus on the cover of Nano Letters

Nano Letters features our work on the cover of its December 2014 issue

In a recent Nano Lett. article, we demonstrate that a 2D mono-elemental semiconductor is a promising candidate. This is exemplified by first-principles study of 2D phosphorus (P), a recently fabricated high-mobility semiconductor. Most of the defects, including intrinsic point defects and grain boundaries, are electronically inactive, thanks to the homoelemental bonding, which is not preferred in heteroelemental system such as MX2. Unlike MX2, the edges of which create deep gap states and cannot be eliminated by passivation, the edge states of 2D P can be removed from the band gap by hydrogen termination. We further find that both the type and the concentration of charge carriers in 2D P can be tuned by doping with foreign atoms.

The cover image represents a “phosphorescent” rendering of some structural and electronic signatures of 2D phosphorus arranged in a collage inspired by the digital rain from “The Matrix” movie.

See more at: Rice News: Phosphorus ‘rain’