Imaging chiral symmetry breaking from Kekule bond order in graphene [electronic resource].

Published:: Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy, 2016.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Physical Description:: pages 950-958 : digital, PDF file
Additional Creators:: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, United States. Department of Energy, and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information

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Summary:

Chirality—or ‘handedness’—is a symmetry property crucial to fields as diverse as biology, chemistry and high-energy physics. In graphene, chiral symmetry emerges naturally as a consequence of the carbon honeycomb lattice. This symmetry can be broken by interactions that couple electrons with opposite momenta in graphene. Here we directly visualize the formation of Kekulé bond order, one such phase of broken chiral symmetry, in an ultraflat graphene sheet grown epitaxially on a copper substrate. We show that its origin lies in the interactions between individual vacancies in the copper substrate that are mediated electronically by the graphene. We show that this interaction causes the bonds in graphene to distort, creating a phase with broken chiral symmetry. Furthermore, the Kekulé ordering is robust at ambient temperature and atmospheric conditions, indicating that intercalated atoms may be harnessed to drive graphene and other two-dimensional materials towards electronically desirable and exotic collective phases.

Report Numbers:

E 1.99:1360195

Subject(s):

Note:

Published through SciTech Connect.
05/23/2016.
"nphys3776"
Nature Physics 12 10 ISSN 1745-2473 AM
Christopher Gutiérrez; Cheol -Joo Kim; Lola Brown; Theanne Schiros; Dennis Nordlund; Edward B. Lochocki; Kyle M. Shen; Jiwoong Park; Abhay N. Pasupathy.

Funding Information:

AC02-76SF00515

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