Creating molecular structures from bilayer graphene and other materials

Abstract

We demonstrate a new technique for creating unique forms of pure sp2-bonded carbon and unprecedented hetero-molecules. These new structures, which we refer to as sculpturenes, are formed by sculpting selected shapes from bilayer graphene, hetero-bilayers or multi-layered materials and allowing the shapes to spontaneously reconstruct. The simplest sculpturene is topologically equivalent to a torus, with dimensions comparable to those of fullerenes. The topology of these new molecular structures is stable against atomic scale defects.