Imaging chiral symmetry breaking from Kekulé bond order in graphene
SCIE
SCOPUS
- Title
- Imaging chiral symmetry breaking from Kekulé bond order in graphene
- Authors
- Christopher Gutiérrez; Cheol-Joo Kim; Lola Brown; Theanne Schiros; Dennis Nordlund; Edward B. Lochocki; Kyle M. Shen; Jiwoong Park; Abhay N. Pasupathy
- Date Issued
- 2016-10
- Publisher
- NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
- Abstract
- 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 Kekule 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. The Kekule 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.
- URI
- https://oasis.postech.ac.kr/handle/2014.oak/96299
- DOI
- 10.1038/NPHYS3776
- ISSN
- 1745-2473
- Article Type
- Article
- Citation
- Nature Physics, vol. 12, no. 10, page. 950 - 958, 2016-10
- Files in This Item:
- There are no files associated with this item.
Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.