Vincent Meunier, the P.B. Breneman Chair, professor and head of the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics in the Penn State College of Engineering, verified the experimental results against quantum simulations to better understand how the bonded layers of glaphene behave at the atomic level. Credit: Caleb Craig/Penn State
Novel hybrid 2D material goes beyond graphene, researchers say
May 28, 2025
Editor’s note: A version of this news release was originally published by Rice University.
By Mariah Lucas
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — While many promising 2D materials have used graphene — prized for its strength and conductivity — in previous hybrid materials, the two materials are stacked in sheets like a deck of cards, which hamper the materials’ ability to interact. Researchers from Penn State, Rice University and the University of Sussex have now chemically merged silica glass and graphene to produce “glaphene,” a single, atom-thick compound that the team said could potentially advance electronics, photonics and quantum systems.
They published their development in Advanced Materials.
“The layers do not just rest on each other — electrons move and form new interactions and vibration states, giving rise to properties neither material has on its own,” said Sathvik Ajay Iyengar, a doctoral student at Rice and a first author on the study. “It opens the door to combining entirely new classes of 2D materials — such as metals with insulators or magnets with semiconductors — to create custom-built materials from the ground up.”
The team developed a two-step, single-reaction method to grow glaphene using a liquid chemical precursor that contains both silicon and carbon. By tuning oxygen levels during heating, they first grew graphene, then shifted conditions to favor the formation of a silica layer. This required a custom high-temperature, low-pressure apparatus designed over several months and effectively introduced a new platform for chemically combining fundamentally different 2D materials.
“That setup was what made the synthesis possible,” Iyengar said. “The resulting material is a true hybrid with new electronic and structural properties.”
Once the material was synthesized, the Rice team worked on confirming its structure with researchers from the University of Sussex.
To better understand how the bonded layers behave at the atomic level, the team collaborated with Vincent Meunier, the P.B. Breneman Chair, professor and head of the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics in the Penn State College of Engineering, to verify the experimental results against quantum simulations.
Meunier used quantum mechanical simulation and theory to describe the atomic details of the interface between graphene and silica and how these details lead to the formation of a hybrid system, confirming that the graphene and silica layers interact and bond in a unique way. This hybrid bonding changes the individual materials’ structures and behaviors, turning a metal and an insulator into a new type of semiconductor.
“The theoretical research that we completed for this paper also includes a description of the emergence of collective vibrations from glaphene that are a signature of the hybridization of graphene and silica into glaphene,” Meunier said.
The research was supported by the Quad Fellowship program, the Rice-Penn State collaborative project funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Sussex Strategy Development Fund, Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia de Nanomateriais de Carbono, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais, and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development.
A U.S. provisional application on this technology was filed.
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