Atomic engineering with electric irradiation

Atomic engineering can selectively induce specific dynamics on single atoms followed by combined steps to form large-scale assemblies thereafter. In a new study now published in Science Advances, Cong Su and an international, interdisciplinary team of scientists in the departments of Materials Science, Electronics, Physics, Nanoscience and Optoelectronic technology; first surveyed the single-step dynamics of graphene dopants. They then developed a theory to describe the probabilities of configurational outcomes based on the momentum of a primary knock-on atom post-collision in an experimental setup. Su et al. showed that the predicted branching ratio of configurational transformation agreed well with the single-atom experiments. The results suggest a way to bias single-atom dynamics to an outcome of interest and will pave the road to design and scale-up atomic engineering using electron irradiation.