Thickness-dependent neutralization of low-energy alkali-metal ions scattering on graphene

Abstract

A challenging effort is under way to understand the essence of the quantum size effect of two-dimensional materials in order to achieve the ultimate goal of arbitrarily tailoring their properties in the near future. Here we present experimental and theoretical study of resonant neutralization of low-energy alkali-metal ions on clean and graphene-covered polycrystalline copper surfaces. The ion neutralization strongly depends on the number of graphene layers, and it gradually saturates for three to five layers of graphene. This result is consistent with that for the graphite surface. The neutral fraction for the clean polycrystalline copper surface is found to be significantly higher than that for the graphene-covered surface, which is not consistent with known regularities. We quantitatively explain those observations through the small energy level width of resonant electron transfer that is determined by the special electronic structure of graphene layers. This finding indicates that resonant neutralization spectroscopy has promising applications in the detection of the quantum size effects of two-dimensional materials at an atomic layer level.