Researchers deepen understanding of graphene growth on liquid metal catalysts
Liquid metal catalysts have recently been attracting attention for synthesizing high-quality 2D materials facilitated via the catalysts’ perfectly smooth surface. However, the microscopic catalytic processes occurring at the surface are still largely unclear because liquid metals escape the accessibility of traditional experimental and computational surface science approaches.
An EU-funded collaboration of researchers that included teams from Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, The European Synchrotron- ESRF, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Aarhus University, Leiden University and Université Grenoble Alpes used novel in situ and in silico techniques to achieve an atomic-level characterization of the graphene adsorption height above liquid Cu, reaching quantitative agreement within 0.1 Å between experiment and theory.