Imaging local electronic corrugations and doped regions in graphene. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Electronic structure heterogeneities are ubiquitous in two-dimensional graphene and profoundly impact the transport properties of this material. Here we show the mapping of discrete electronic domains within a single graphene sheet using scanning transmission X-ray microscopy in conjunction with ab initio density functional theory calculations. Scanning transmission X-ray microscopy imaging provides a wealth of detail regarding the extent to which the unoccupied levels of graphene are modified by corrugation, doping and adventitious impurities, as a result of synthesis and processing. Local electronic corrugations, visualized as distortions of the *cloud, have been imaged alongside inhomogeneously doped regions characterized by distinctive spectral signatures of altered unoccupied density of states. The combination of density functional theory calculations, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy imaging, and in situ near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy experiments also provide resolution of a longstanding debate in the literature regarding the spectral assignments of pre-edge and interlayer states.

published proceedings

  • Nat Commun

altmetric score

  • 20.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Schultz, B. J., Patridge, C. J., Lee, V., Jaye, C., Lysaght, P. S., Smith, C., ... Banerjee, S.

citation count

  • 109

complete list of authors

  • Schultz, Brian J||Patridge, Christopher J||Lee, Vincent||Jaye, Cherno||Lysaght, Patrick S||Smith, Casey||Barnett, Joel||Fischer, Daniel A||Prendergast, David||Banerjee, Sarbajit

publication date

  • June 2011