Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10745
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Funding
- Air Force Office of Science Research [FA9550-12-1-02520]
- Center for Probing the Nanoscale, an NSF NSEC [PHY-0830228]
- National Basic Research Program of China (Program 973) [2013CB934500]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [61325021, 91223204]
- Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDB07010100]
- Elemental Strategy Initiative
- JSPS [262480621, 25106006]
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Graphene monolayers are known to display domains of anisotropic friction with twofold symmetry and anisotropy exceeding 200%. This anisotropy has been thought to originate from periodic nanoscale ripples in the graphene sheet, which enhance puckering around a sliding asperity to a degree determined by the sliding direction. Here we demonstrate that these frictional domains derive not from structural features in the graphene but from self-assembly of environmental adsorbates into a highly regular superlattice of stripes with period 4-6 nm. The stripes and resulting frictional domains appear on monolayer and multilayer graphene on a variety of substrates, as well as on exfoliated flakes of hexagonal boron nitride. We show that the stripe-superlattices can be reproducibly and reversibly manipulated with submicrometre precision using a scanning probe microscope, allowing us to create arbitrary arrangements of frictional domains within a single flake. Our results suggest a revised understanding of the anisotropic friction observed on graphene and bulk graphite in terms of adsorbates.
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