Phase separation of hydrogen atoms adsorbed on graphene and the smoothness of the graphene-graphane interface

Abstract

The electronic properties of a graphene sheet with attached hydrogen atoms is studied using a modified Falicov-Kimball model on the honeycomb lattice. It is shown that in the ground state this system separates into two phases: fully hydrogenated graphene (graphane) and hydrogen-free graphene. The graphene-graphane boundary acquires a positive interface tension. Therefore, the graphene-graphane interface becomes a straight line, slightly rippled by thermal fluctuations. A smooth interface may be useful for the fabrication of mesoscopic graphene-based devices.

7 pages, 4 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (6)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Graphane: a two-dimensional hydrocarbon
• Electronic properties of mesoscopic graphene structures: charge confinement and control of spin and charge transport
• Long-Range Interaction Between Adatoms in Graphene
• Enhanced stability of hydrogen atoms at the graphene/graphane interface of nanoribbons
• Phase separation in a two-band model for strongly correlated electrons

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Electronic phase separation: recent progress in the old problem
• Metal-insulator transition and phase separation in doped AA-stacked graphene bilayers
• Phase separation of antiferromagnetic ground states in systems with imperfect nesting
• Tight-Binding Model for Adatoms on Graphene: Analytical Density of States, Spectral Function, and Induced Magnetic Moment
• Magnetic field effects in electron systems with imperfect nesting
• Graphene with adatoms: tuning the magnetic moment with an applied voltage
• Spin-density wave state in simple hexagonal graphite