Atomic vacancies have a strong impact in the mechanical, electronic, and magnetic properties of graphenelike materials. By artificially generating isolated vacancies on a graphite surface and measuring their local density of states on the atomic scale, we have shown how single vacancies modify the electronic properties of this graphenelike system. Our scanning tunneling microscopy experiments, complemented by tight-binding calculations, reveal the presence of a sharp electronic resonance at the Fermi energy around each single graphite vacancy, which can be associated with the formation of local magnetic moments and implies a dramatic reduction of the charge carriers' mobility. While vacancies in single layer graphene lead to magnetic couplings of arbitrary sign, our results show the possibility of inducing a macroscopic ferrimagnetic state in multilayered graphene just by randomly removing single C atoms.

Isolated hydrogen atoms absorbed on graphene are predicted to induce magnetic moments. Here we demonstrate that the adsorption of a single hydrogen atom on graphene induces a magnetic moment characterized by a ~20-millielectron volt spin-split state at the Fermi energy. Our scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments, complemented by first-principles calculations, show that such a spin-polarized state is essentially localized on the carbon sublattice opposite to the one where the hydrogen atom is chemisorbed. This atomically modulated spin texture, which extends several nanometers away from the hydrogen atom, drives the direct coupling between the magnetic moments at unusually long distances. By using the STM tip to manipulate hydrogen atoms with atomic precision, it is possible to tailor the magnetism of selected graphene regions.

Extensive scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy experiments complemented by firstprinciples and parametrized tight binding calculations provide a clear answer to the existence, origin, and robustness of van Hove singularities (vHs) in twisted graphene layers. Our results are conclusive: vHs due to interlayer coupling are ubiquitously present in a broad range (from 1 to 10 ) of rotation angles in our graphene on 6H-SiC(000-1) samples. From the variation of the energy separation of the vHs with the rotation angle we are able to recover the Fermi velocity of a graphene monolayer as well as the strength of the interlayer interaction. The robustness of the vHs is assessed both by experiments, which show that they survive in the presence of a third graphene layer, and by calculations, which test the role of the periodic modulation and absolute value of the interlayer distance. Finally, we clarify the role of the layer topographic corrugation and of electronic effects in the apparent moiré contrast measured on the STM images. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.196802 PACS numbers: 73.22.Pr, 61.48.Gh, 68.37.Ef, 73.20.At Soon after the discovery of the unique electronic properties of graphene [1-3], suggestions were made for engineering the band structure of this material. It has been proposed that periodic potentials with wavelengths in the nanometer range could lead to anisotropic renormalization of the velocity of low energy charge carriers [4] or to the generation of new massless Dirac fermions [5]. Experimental works intended for verifying these theoretical predictions were recently reported [6][7][8], where the periodic perturbation was generated either by a lattice mismatch with the supporting material or by a self-organized array of clusters. An alternative route for modifying graphene's band structure would be to exploit a rotation between stacked graphene layers [9]. According to calculations, for large angles ( !15 ) the low energy band structure of graphene should be preserved [10][11][12]. For intermediate angles (1 15 ), it is predicted that, while the linear dispersion persists in the vicinity of the Dirac points of both layers, the band velocity is depressed and two saddle points appear in the band structure, giving rise to two logarithmic van Hove singularities (vHs) in the density of states (DOS) [9,[13][14][15][16][17][18]. For smaller angles ( 1 ) weakly dispersive bands appear at low energy [19,20] with sharp DOS peaks very close to the Dirac point [17,18].Twisted graphene layers are commonly found on different substrates, such as metals [13,21,22], the C face of SiC [23][24][25], or graphite surfaces [26,27]. Transfer techniques yielding large domains of twisted bilayers over a macroscopic sample [28] and quantitative, fast, Raman characterization tools [29,30] have recently been proposed. However, despite the fact that rotated graphene layers are readily available and a number of measurements have confirmed that large twist angles lead to an electronic decoupling of stacked graphene layers [...

Understanding the coupling of graphene with its local environment is critical to be able to integrate it in tomorrow's electronic devices. Here we show how the presence of a metallic substrate affects the properties of an atomically tailored graphene layer. We have deliberately introduced single carbon vacancies on a graphene monolayer grown on a Pt(111) surface and investigated its impact in the electronic, structural and magnetic properties of the graphene layer. Our low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy studies, complemented by density functional theory, show the existence of a broad electronic resonance above the Fermi energy associated with the vacancies. Vacancy sites become reactive leading to an increase of the coupling between the graphene layer and the metal substrate at these points; this gives rise to a rapid decay of the localized state and the quenching of the magnetic moment associated with carbon vacancies in free-standing graphene layers.

In a zero-dimensional superconductor, quantum size effects (QSE) not only set the limit to superconductivity, but are also at the heart of new phenomena such as shell effects, which have been predicted to result in large enhancements of the superconducting energy gap. Here, we experimentally demonstrate these QSE through measurements on single, isolated Pb and Sn nanoparticles. In both systems superconductivity is ultimately quenched at sizes governed by the dominance of the quantum fluctuations of the order parameter. However, before the destruction of superconductivity, in Sn nanoparticles we observe giant oscillations in the superconducting energy gap with particle size leading to enhancements as large as 60%. These oscillations are the first experimental proof of coherent shell effects in nanoscale superconductors. Contrarily, we observe no such oscillations in the gap for Pb nanoparticles, which is ascribed to the suppression of shell effects for shorter coherence lengths. Our study paves the way to exploit QSE in boosting superconductivity in low-dimensional systems.