Breitwieser, Romain; Hu, Yu-Cheng; Chao, Yen Cheng; Li, Ren-Jie; Tzeng, Yi Ren; Li, Lain-Jong; Liou, Sz-Chian; Lin, Keng Ching; Chen, Chih Wei; Pai, Woei Wu
Flipping nanoscale ripples of free-standing graphene using a scanning tunneling microscope tip
CARBON, 77:236-243, OCT 2014

We present a scanning tunneling microscopy study of the stress-strain behavior of a rippled single-layer free-standing graphene (FSG) and report that FSG exhibits a non-linear sigmoidal stress-strain behavior. We managed to pull and push nanoripples by controlling the STM tip-FSG interaction forces. In this way, we found that the initial deformations of a rippled FSG involve sign reversals of the nanoripple's local curvatures, termed "flipping". In contrast to elastic deformation of graphene, flipping of a FSG nanoripple encounters a stress barrier and therefore makes a rippled FSG metastable, as evidenced by monitoring a yielding process in both experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. The evolution of nanoripples subjected to STM control is also fully consistent with atom-resolved images. Our work therefore shows how rippled 2D carbon deforms at nanoscale. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI:10.1016/j.carbon.2014.05.026

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