Destruction of graphene by metal adatoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different metal adatoms affect the stability of graphene by calculating vacancy formation energies, revealing that transition metals significantly weaken graphene's structure while gold has minimal impact.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of how various metal adatoms influence vacancy formation energies in graphene, highlighting the need for protective measures against transition metal impurities.

Findings

Transition metals like Fe, Ni, Co lower vacancy formation energies in graphene.

Gold adatoms have negligible effect on vacancy formation energies.

Transition metal impurities pose a significant risk to graphene integrity.

Abstract

The formation energies for mono- and bivacancies in graphene in the presence of adatoms of various metals and small metallic clusters have been calculated. It is shown that transition metal impurities, such as iron, nickel and, especially, cobalt reduce dramatically the vacancy formation energies whereas gold impurities have almost no effect on characteristics of the vacancies. This results highlight that special measures are required in order to protect graphene from damage by transition metal leads.