Recently, freestanding atomically thick Fe metal patches up to 10 atoms wide have been fabricated experimentally in tiny pores in graphene. This concept can be extended conceptually to extended freestanding monolayers. We have therefore performed ab initio molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate the early melting stages of platinum, silver, gold, and copper freestanding metal monolayers. Our...

Freestanding and vertically-oriented metal nanowire arrays have potential utility in a number of applications, but presently lack a route to fabrication. Template-based techniques, such as electrodeposition into lithographically defined nanopore arrays, have produced well-ordered nanowire arrays with a maximum pitch of about 2 μm; such nanowires, however, tend to cluster due to local attractive...

Based on first-principles calculations we show that gold atoms can form both freestanding and tip-suspended chiral single-wall nanotubes composed of helical atomic strands. The freestanding, infinite (5,5) tube is found to be energetically the most favorable. While energetically less favorable, the experimentally observed (5,3) tube stretching between two tips corresponds to a local minimum in ...

The ability to pattern planar and freestanding 3D metallic architectures at the microscale would enable myriad applications, including flexible electronics, displays, sensors, and electrically small antennas. A 3D printing method is introduced that combines direct ink writing with a focused laser that locally anneals printed metallic features "on-the-fly." To optimize the nozzle-to-laser separa...

Genetically-engineered collagen peptides were assembled into freestanding films when QDs are co-assembled as joints between collagen domains. These peptide based films show excellent mechanical properties with Young's modulus of ~20 GPa, much larger than most of multi-composite polymer films and previously reported freestanding nanoparticle-assembled sheets, and it is even close to the bone tis...

We show that edge stresses introduce intrinsic ripples in freestanding graphene sheets even in the absence of any thermal effects. Compressive edge stresses along zigzag and armchair edges of the sheet cause out-of-plane warping to attain several degenerate mode shapes. Based on elastic plate theory, we identify scaling laws for the amplitude and penetration depth of edge ripples as a function ...

CH3NH3PbI3 was found to exhibit inverse solubility at high temperatures in γ-butyrolactone. Making use of this unusual, so far unreported phenomenon, we present a facile method for the growth of freestanding crystals of CH3NH3PbI3 from solution without addition of any capping agents or seed particles. Large, strongly faceted crystals could be grown within minutes. This finding may aid in unders...