Glaphene: A Hybridization of 2D Silica Glass and Graphene.

Abstract

2D materials provide ideal platforms for breakthroughs in both fundamental science and practical, real-world applications. Despite the broad diversity of 2D materials, most integration efforts have focused on homo/hetero-structural stacking and Janus structures. In this paper, we introduce "glaphene"-a hybrid of two fundamentally different materials: 2D silica glass and graphene. We propose a metastable hybrid structure based on first-principles calculations, synthesize it via scalable liquid precursor-based vapor-phase growth, and chemically validate the interlayer structure and hybridization using extensive optical and electron spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and atomic-resolution electron microscopy. Using probe microscopy, we reveal that electronic cloud redistribution at the interface-beyond conventional van der Waals interactions-drives interlayer hybridization via a strong electronic proximity effect. By reconstructing the energy level diagram of glaphene through both theory and experiment, we show that the combination of semi-metallic graphene (E_g≈0 eV) and insulating 2D silica glass (E_{g, exp}≈8.2 eV, E_{g, th}≈7 eV) results in a semiconducting "glaphene" (E_{g, exp}≈3.6 eV, E_{g, th}≈4 eV) formed through out-of-plane p_z hybridization. This work paves the way for scalable, bottom-up methodologies to bring interlayer hybridization and its emergent properties to the 2D materials toolbox.