Stone-Wales defects preserve hyperuniformity in amorphous two- dimensional networks

DY Chen and Y Zheng and L Liu and G Zhang and MH Chen and Y Jiao and HL Zhuang, PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 118, e2016862118 (2021).

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2016862118

Disordered hyperuniformity (DHU) is a recently discovered novel state of many-body systems that possesses vanishing normalized infinite- wavelength density fluctuations similar to a perfect crystal and an amorphous structure like a liquid or glass. Here, we discover a hyperuniformity-preserving topological transformation in two-dimensional (2D) network structures that involves continuous introduction of Stone- Wales (SW) defects. Specifically, the static structure factor S(k) of the resulting defected networks possesses the scaling S(k) similar to k(alpha) for small wave number k, where 1 <= alpha(p) <= 2 monotonically decreases as the SW defect concentration p increases, reaches alpha approximate to 1 at p approximate to 0.12, and remains almost flat beyond this p. Our findings have important implications for amorphous 2D materials since the SW defects are well known to capture the salient feature of disorder in these materials. Verified by recently synthesized single-layer amorphous graphene, our network models reveal unique electronic transport mechanisms and mechanical behaviors associated with distinct classes of disorder in 2D materials.

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