Researchers synthesized a material that has been dubbed "the cousin graphene."
The 2D material is called germanene, and is made up of just a single layer of atoms. The material is expected to have impressive electrical and optical properties and could be extremely useful in the electronics industry, the Institute of Physics reported.
Germanene was first proposed in 2009 but has stayed under the radar until now. The process for synthesizing germanene is to deposit individual germanium atoms onto a substrate under extremely hot temperatures and an ultra-high vacuum. The researchers discovered gold could also be used as a substrate.
"Following our synthesis of graphene's other cousin, silicene, we thought it natural to try and produce germanene in the same way, by despositing germanium onto a silver substrate," said co-author of the study Professor Guy Le Lay of Aix-Marseille University. "This attempt failed, so I decided to switch to a gold substrate, having remembered my old work from my Ph.D. thesis, in which gold was grown onto a germanium substrate. I thought it would be worth trying the other way around."
After depositing the germanium atoms onto the gold substrate the team confirmed the material was germanene by taking spectroscopy measurements and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The observations revealed the characteristic "honeycomb" structure of the material.
The team believes with further development germanene could by grown on thin gold films atop flexible substrates, which would be much cheaper than platinum. Germanene could be used as a topological insulator at room temperature, which could be useful in quantum computing.
"We have provided compelling evidence of the birth of nearly flat germanene - a novel, synthetic germanium allotrope which does not exist in nature. It is a new cousin of graphene," Le Lay said.
"The synthesis of germanene is just the very beginning of a long quest. Indeed, success in the synthesis was not easy to achieve and quite demanding. A considerable amount of work is now needed to further characterize the electronic properties of the material."
The findings were published in a recent edition of New Journal of Physics.
