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Published May 27, 2017 | Published
Journal Article Open

Electrochemical Formation of Germanene: pH 4.5

Abstract

Germanene is a single layer allotrope of Ge, with a honeycomb structure similar to graphene. This report concerns the electrochemical formation of germanene in a pH 4.5 solution. The studies were performed using in situ Electrochemical Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (EC-STM), voltammetry, coulometry, surface X-ray diffraction (SXRD) and Raman spectroscopy to study germanene electrodeposition on Au(111) terraces. The deposition of Ge is kinetically slow and stops after 2–3 monolayers. EC-STM revealed a honeycomb (HC) structure with a rhombic unit cell, 0.44 ± 0.02 nm on a side, very close to that predicted for germanene in the literature. Ideally the HC structure is a continuous sheet, with six Ge atoms around each hole. However, only small domains, surrounded by defects, of this structure were observed in this study. The small coherence length and multiple rotations domains made direct observation with surface X-ray diffraction difficult. Raman spectroscopy was used to investigate the multi-layer Ge deposits. A peak near 290 cm^(−1), predicted to correspond to germanene, was observed on one particular area of the sample, while the rest resembled amorphous germanium. Electrochemical studies of germanene showed limited stability when exposed to oxygen.

Additional Information

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited. Manuscript submitted March 9, 2017; Revised manuscript received May 8, 2017; Published May 27, 2017. This was Paper 1313 presented at the Chicago, Illinois, Meeting of the Society, May 24–28, 2015. Support from the National Science Foundation, DMR #1410109, is gratefully acknowledged, in addition to support from the National Science Foundation grant CHE-1214152 and by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF1225). The research was in part carried out through the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at the California Institute of Technology, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub, supported through the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Award Number DE-SC0004993, which provided support for Y.-G.K. and M.P.S. to perform the EC-STM experiments. We thank Dr. Resta from the Synchrotron Soleil, L'Orme des Merisiers, for his contributions to this work.

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August 21, 2023
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