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Huang S, Villalobos LF, Li S, Vahdat MT, Chi HY, Hsu KJ, Bondaz L, Boureau V, Marzari N, Agrawal KV. In Situ Nucleation-Decoupled and Site-Specific Incorporation of Å-Scale Pores in Graphene Via Epoxidation. Adv Mater 2022; 34:e2206627. [PMID: 36271513 DOI: 10.1002/adma.202206627] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2022] [Revised: 10/10/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Generating pores in graphene by decoupled nucleation and expansion is desired to achieve a fine control over the porosity, and is desired to advance several applications. Herein, epoxidation is introduced, which is the formation of nanosized epoxy clusters on the graphitic lattice as nucleation sites without forming pores. In situ gasification of clusters inside a transmission electron microscope shows that pores are generated precisely at the site of the clusters by surpassing an energy barrier of 1.3 eV. Binding energy predictions using ab initio calculations combined with the cluster nucleation theory reveal the structure of the epoxy clusters and indicate that the critical cluster is an epoxy dimer. Finally, it is shown that the cluster gasification can be manipulated to form Å-scale pores which then effectively sieve gas molecules based on their size. This decoupled cluster nucleation and pore formation will likely pave the way for an independent control of pore size and density.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shiqi Huang
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Luis Francisco Villalobos
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Shaoxian Li
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Mohammad Tohidi Vahdat
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
- Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS) and National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials (MARVEL), EPFL, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland
| | - Heng-Yu Chi
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Kuang-Jung Hsu
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Luc Bondaz
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Victor Boureau
- Interdisciplinary Center for Electron Microscopy, EPFL, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland
| | - Nicola Marzari
- Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS) and National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials (MARVEL), EPFL, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland
| | - Kumar Varoon Agrawal
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
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