Graphene-like monolayer low-buckled honeycomb germanium film

YZ He and HB Luo and H Li and YW Sui and FX Wei and QK Meng and WM Yang and JQ Qi, JOURNAL OF CRYSTAL GROWTH, 463, 187-193 (2017).

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrysgro.2017.02.022

Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to study the cooling process of two-dimensional liquid germanium under nanoslit confinement. The results clearly indicates that the liquid germanium undergoes an obvious liquid-solid phase transition to a monolayer honeycomb film with the decrease of temperature, accompanying the rapid change in potential energy, atomic volume, coordination-number and lateral radial distribution function. During the solidification process, some hexagonal atomic islands first randomly emerge in the disordered liquid film and then grow up to stable crystal grains which keep growing and finally connect together to form a honeycomb polycrystalline film. It is worth noting that the honeycomb germanium film is low-buckled, quite different from the planar graphene. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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