In 1665 Christiaan Huygens first noticed how two pendulums, regardless of their initial state, would synchronize. It is now known that the universe is full of complex self-organizing systems, from neural networks to correlated materials. Here, graphene flakes, nucleated over a polycrystalline graphene film, synchronize during growth so as to ultimately yield a common crystal orientation at the macroscale. Strain and diffusion gradients are argued as the probable causes for the long-range cross-talk between flakes and the formation of a single-grain graphene layer. The work demonstrates that graphene synthesis can be advanced to control the nucleated crystal shape, registry, and relative alignment between graphene crystals for large area, that is, a single-crystal bilayer, and (AB-stacked) few-layer graphene can been grown at the wafer scale.
Keywords: 2D materials; bilayer graphene; global alignment; graphene; stacking order.
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.