New approach for fabrication germanene with Dirac electrons preserved: A first principle study

TL;DR

This study proposes a novel sandwich-dehydrogenation method to fabricate germanene, successfully preserving its Dirac electronic properties and enabling Fermi velocity tuning through interlayer spacing control.

Contribution

Introduces a new fabrication technique for germanene that maintains Dirac electrons and allows electronic property manipulation, overcoming previous amorphization issues.

Findings

Germanene with preserved Dirac electrons was successfully fabricated.

Fermi velocity can be tuned by adjusting interlayer spacing.

The method overcomes amorphization problems of previous approaches.

Abstract

How to obtain germanene with Dirac electrons preserved is still an open challenge. Here we report a sandwich-dehydrogenation approach, i.e., to fabricate germanene through dehydrogenating germanane in a sandwiched structure. The dehydrogenation can spontaneously occur for the sandwiched structure, which overcomes the problem of amorphization in the heating dehydrogenation approach. The obtained germanene preserve the Dirac electronic properties very well. Moreover, the Fermi velocity of germanene can be efficiently manipulated through controlling the interlayer spacing between germanane and the sandwiching surfaces. Our results indicate a guideline for fabrication of prefect two-dimensional materials.