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Two-dimensional few-atom noble gas clusters in a graphene sandwich

Nature Materials (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The van der Waals atomic solids of noble gases on metals at cryogenic temperatures were the first experimental examples of two-dimensional systems. Recently, such structures have also been created on surfaces under encapsulation by graphene, allowing studies at elevated temperatures through scanning tunnelling microscopy. However, for this technique, the encapsulation layer often obscures the arrangement of the noble gas atoms. Here we create Kr and Xe clusters in between two suspended graphene layers, and uncover their atomic structure through transmission electron microscopy. We show that small crystals (N < 9) arrange on the basis of the simple non-directional van der Waals interaction. Larger crystals show some deviations, possibly enabled by deformations in the encapsulating graphene lattice. We further discuss the dynamics of the clusters within the graphene sandwich, and show that although all the Xe clusters with up to N ≈ 100 remain solid, Kr clusters with already N ≈ 16 turn occasionally fluid under our experimental conditions (under a pressure of ~0.3 GPa). This study opens a way for the so-far unexplored frontier of encapsulated two-dimensional van der Waals solids with exciting possibilities for fundamental condensed-matter physics research and possible applications in quantum information technology.

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Fig. 1: Structure of small clusters.
Fig. 2: Interatomic distances and 3D-to-2D transformation.
Fig. 3: Cluster migration.
Fig. 4: Structure of larger clusters.

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Data availability

All original data used for producing the presented results are available in the Supplementary Information and via the University of Vienna’s PHAIDRA repository at https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/detail/o:1438307 (ref. 32).

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding through the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) within projects P31605 (J.K.), P34797 (J.K.) and M2595 (E.H.Å.), as well as generous grants for computational resources from the Vienna Scientific Cluster.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Vienna, Austria

    Manuel Längle, Clemens Mangler, Alberto Trentino, Kimmo Mustonen, E. Harriet Åhlgren & Jani Kotakoski

  2. University of Vienna, Vienna Doctoral School in Physics, Vienna, Austria

    Manuel Längle & Alberto Trentino

  3. University of Helsinki, Department of Physics, Helsinki, Finland

    Kenichiro Mizohata & E. Harriet Åhlgren

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  1. Manuel Längle
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  6. E. Harriet Åhlgren
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  7. Jani Kotakoski
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Contributions

M.L. and J.K. designed the experiments. M.L. prepared the samples and carried out the ion irradiation with the help of K. Mizohata and E.H.Å. E.H.Å. carried out the molecular dynamics simulations and analysed the data together with J.K. M.L. and A.T. carried out the microscopy with help from C.M., K. Mustonen and J.K. M.L. and J.K. analysed the experimental data, plotted the figures and wrote the first draft. All authors were involved in writing the manuscript. J.K. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Manuel Längle or Jani Kotakoski.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Materials thanks Feng Ding, Rahul Raveendran Nair and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10.

Supplementary Video 1

Video showing all the images of the image series related to Fig. 3.

Supplementary Video 2

Video showing all the images of the image series related to the Kr structure shown in Fig. 4.

Supplementary Video 3

Video showing all the images of the image series related to the Xe structure shown in Fig. 4.

Supplementary Video 4

Video showing all the images of the image series related to the first part of Supplementary Fig. 5.

Supplementary Video 5

Video showing all the images of the image series related to the second part of Supplementary Fig. 5.

Supplementary Video 6

Video showing all the images of the image series related to Supplementary Fig. 10.

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Längle, M., Mizohata, K., Mangler, C. et al. Two-dimensional few-atom noble gas clusters in a graphene sandwich. Nat. Mater. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01780-1

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