TY - JOUR
T1 - Dual-Sided Adsorption
T2 - Devil's Staircase of Coverage Fractions
AU - Tang, Youjian
AU - Chia, Cheng Ing
AU - Crespi, Vincent H.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Physical Society.
PY - 2018/1/31
Y1 - 2018/1/31
N2 - By adsorbing the same species onto both sides of a suspended, atomically thin membrane, it is possible to couple two distinct surface adsorption systems. This new system, with reflection symmetry about the membrane, is described by a phase diagram with two axes, both representing the chemical potential of the same element, but in distinct half-spaces. For the case of potassium adsorption onto a graphene membrane, the result is a devil's staircase of fractions for the proportion of adsorbates adhered to one side. Fractions with simpler denominators are favored across wider regions of chemical potential, a pattern reminiscent of other fractional systems across a wide range of physics. Since the system can support multiple devil's staircases each at a distinct overall adsorbate areal density, points along the boundary between adjacent staircases can come arbitrarily close to violating the Gibbs phase rule. This dual-sided adsorbate geometry provides a means to explore surface science for pairs of weakly coupled surfaces.
AB - By adsorbing the same species onto both sides of a suspended, atomically thin membrane, it is possible to couple two distinct surface adsorption systems. This new system, with reflection symmetry about the membrane, is described by a phase diagram with two axes, both representing the chemical potential of the same element, but in distinct half-spaces. For the case of potassium adsorption onto a graphene membrane, the result is a devil's staircase of fractions for the proportion of adsorbates adhered to one side. Fractions with simpler denominators are favored across wider regions of chemical potential, a pattern reminiscent of other fractional systems across a wide range of physics. Since the system can support multiple devil's staircases each at a distinct overall adsorbate areal density, points along the boundary between adjacent staircases can come arbitrarily close to violating the Gibbs phase rule. This dual-sided adsorbate geometry provides a means to explore surface science for pairs of weakly coupled surfaces.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.056101
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.056101
M3 - Article
C2 - 29481191
AN - SCOPUS:85041285325
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 120
JO - Physical review letters
JF - Physical review letters
IS - 5
M1 - 056101
ER -