Indirect interactions of metal nanoparticles through graphene

We employ ultra-high vacuum electron microscopy to investigate the interaction of metal nanoparticles through graphene. The nanoparticles attract those on the other side of graphene in the systems of Ag/graphene/Ag and Cu/graphene/Cu. In contrast, the system of Au/graphene/Au manifests the repelling interaction. Our density functional theory calculations demonstrate that for lower electron-affinity metals such as Cu and Ag, the clusters on opposite sides of graphene prefer the same site to share the electron-loss and reduce the energy. While for higher electron-affinity metals such as Au, they prefer to stay away from the clusters on the other side of graphene. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

This study utilized ultra-high vacuum electron microscopy to investigate the interaction of metal nanoparticles through graphene. The experimental results showed that there is an attractive or repelling interaction between nanoparticles in different metal systems. Theoretical calculations suggest that this phenomenon is related to the electron affinity of metals.