2010/09/01 by Sondes Karoui, Karoui, Sondes, Hakim Amara +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1009.0192
arxiv created 2010/09/01 · arxiv updated 2010/09/02
The healing of graphene grown from a metallic substrate is investigated using tight-binding Monte Carlo simulations. At temperatures (ranging from 1000 to 2500 K), an isolated graphene sheet can anneal a large number of defects suggesting that their healing are thermally activated. We show that in presence of a nickel substrate we obtain a perfect graphene layer. The nickel-carbon chemical bonds keep breaking and reforming around defected carbon zones, providing a direct interaction, necessary for the healing. Thus, the action of Ni atoms is found to play a key role in the reconstruction of the graphene sheet by annealing defects.