The Stone-Wales trefoil: a new topological defect in graphene

Abstract

Specific heat of graphite at high temperatures demonstrates significant deviation from the ``3R'' Dulong-Petite law. It can be explained by accumulation of defects with formation energy as low as 1.45 eV. Based on the density functional theory calculations, we propose a possible candidate of topological defects, whose energy is comparable to the growth activation energy.