No Arabic abstract
For the first time bis-functionalization of graphene employing two successive reduction and covalent bond formation steps are reported. Both bulk functionalization in solution and functionalization of individual sheets deposited on surfaces have been carried out. Whereas in the former case attacks from both sides of the basal plane are possible and can lead to strain-free architectures, in the latter case, retro-functionalizations can get important when the corresponding anion of the addend represents a sufficiently good leaving group.
Based on a low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy study, we present a direct visualization of a cycloaddition reaction performed for some specific fluorinated maleimide molecules deposited on graphene. These studies showed that the cycloaddition reactions can be carried out on the basal plane of graphene, even when there are no pre-existing defects. In the course of covalently grafting the molecules to graphene, the sp2 conjugation of carbon atoms was broken and local sp3 bonds were created. The grafted molecules perturbed the graphene lattice, generating a standing-wave pattern with an anisotropy which was attributed to a (1,2) cycloaddition, as revealed by T-matrix approximation calculations. DFT calculations showed that while both (1,4) and (1,2) cycloaddition were possible on free standing graphene, only the (1,2) cycloaddition could be obtained for graphene on SiC(0001). Globally averaging spectroscopic techniques, XPS and ARPES, were used to determine the modification in the elemental composition of the samples induced by the reaction, indicating an opening of an electronic gap in graphene.
The current state of the chemical functionalization of three types of single sheet 2D materials, namely, graphene, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and black phosphorus (BP) is summarized. Such 2D sheet polymers represent currently an emerging field at the interface of synthetic chemistry, physics, and materials science. Both covalent and non-covalent functionalization of sheet architectures allows for a systematic modification of their properties, i.e. an improvement of solubility and processability, the prevention of re-aggregation or a band gap tuning. Next to successful functionalization concepts also fundamental challenges are addressed. These include the insolubility and polydispersity of most 2D sheet polymers, the development of suitable characterization tools, the identification of effective binding strategies, the chemical activation of the usually rather unreactive basal planes for covalent addend binding, and the regioselectivity of plane addition reactions. Although a number of these questions remain elusive in this review, the first promising concepts to overcome such hurdles have been listed.
The accurate calculation of excited state properties of interacting electrons in the condensed phase is an immense challenge in computational physics. Here, we use state-of-the-art equation-of-motion coupled-cluster theory with single and double excitations (EOM-CCSD) to calculate the dynamic structure factor, which can be experimentally measured by inelastic x-ray and electron scattering. Our calculations are performed on the uniform electron gas at densities corresponding to Wigner-Seitz radii of $r_s=5$, 4, and 3 corresponding to the valence electron densities of common metals. We compare our results to those obtained using the random-phase approximation, which is known to provide a reasonable description of the collective plasmon excitation and which resums only a small subset of the polarizability diagrams included in EOM-CCSD. We find that EOM-CCSD, instead of providing a perturbative improvement on the RPA plasmon, predicts a many-state plasmon resonance, where each contributing state has a double-excitation character of 80% or more. This finding amounts to an ab initio treatment of the plasmon linewidth, which is in good quantitative agreement with previous diagrammatic calculations, and highlights the strongly correlated nature of lifetime effects in condensed-phase electronic structure theory.
Atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides are highly promising for integrated optoelectronic and photonic systems due to their exciton-driven linear and nonlinear interaction with light. Integrating them into optical fibers yields novel opportunities in optical communication, remote sensing, and all-fiber optoelectronics. However, scalable and reproducible deposition of high quality monolayers on optical fibers is a challenge. Here, we report the chemical vapor deposition of monolayer MoS2 and WS2 crystals on the core of microstructured exposed core optical fibers and their interaction with the fibers guided modes. We demonstrate two distinct application possibilities of 2D-functionalized waveguides to exemplify their potential. First, we simultaneously excite and collect excitonic 2D material photoluminescence with the fiber modes, opening a novel route to remote sensing. Then we show that third harmonic generation is modified by the highly localized nonlinear polarization of the monolayers, yielding a new avenue to tailor nonlinear optical processes in fibers. We anticipate that our results may lead to significant advances in optical fiber based technologies.
We discuss two projects exploring the integration of thin CMOS pixel sensors in order to prototype ladders matching the geometry needed for the ILD vertex detector. The PLUME project has designed and fabricated full-size and fully functional double- sided layers which currently reach 0.6 % X0 and aim for 0.3 % X0 in mid-2012. Another approach, SERNWIETE, consists in wrapping the sensors in a polyimide-based micro-cable to obtain a supportless single-sided ladder with a material budget around 0.15 % X0. First promising samples have been produced and the full-size prototype is expected in spring 2012.