Strain Modulation of Graphene by Nanoscale Substrate Curvatures: A Molecular View

Abstract

Spatially nonuniform strain is important for engineering the pseudomagnetic field and band structure of graphene. Despite the wide interest in strain engineering, there is still a lack of control on device-compatible strain patterns due to the limited understanding of the structure-strain relationship. Here, we study the effect of substrate corrugation and curvature on the strain profiles of graphene via combined experimental and theoretical studies of a model system: graphene on closely packed SiO2 nanospheres with different diameters (20-200 nm). Experimentally, via quantitative Raman analysis, we observe partial adhesion and wrinkle features and find that smaller nanospheres induce larger tensile strain in graphene, theoretically, molecular dynamics simulations confirm the same microscopic structure and size dependence of strain and reveal that a larger strain is caused by a stronger, inhomogeneous interaction force between smaller nanospheres and graphene. This molecular-level understanding of the strain mechanism is important for strain engineering of graphene and other two-dimensional materials.

Nano Letters (2018)

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• In-situ strain tuning in hBN-encapsulated graphene electronic devices
• Disentangling stress and curvature effects in layered 2D ferroelectric CuInP2S6
• Graphene Quantum Strain Transistors
• Nearly flat Chern band in periodically strained monolayer and bilayer graphene
• On the propagation of Dirac fermions in graphene with the strain-induced inhomogeneous Fermi velocity
• Strongly Absorbing Nanoscale Infrared Domains within Graphene Bubbles
• Sublattice symmetry breaking and Kondo-effect enhancement in strained graphene
• Emergence of strain-induced moiré patterns and pseudo-magnetic field confined states in graphene
• The Structure of Graphene on Graphene/C60/Cu Interfaces: A Molecular Dynamics Study
• Elastic Screening of Pseudogauge Fields in Graphene
• Electronic transport in a two-dimensional superlattice engineered via self-assembled nanostructures
• Geometrical properties of strained and twisted moiré heterostructures
• Valley focusing effect in a rippled graphene superlattice
• Theory of the Strain Engineering of Graphene Nanoconstrictions
• Shape Entropy of a Reconfigurable Ising Surface
• Average density of Bloch electrons in a homogeneous magnetic field: A second-order response