Attraction-repulsion transition in the interaction of adatoms and vacancies in graphene

Abstract

The interaction of two resonant impurities in graphene has been predicted to have a long-range character with weaker repulsion when the two adatoms reside on the same sublattice and stronger attraction when they are on different sublattices. We reveal that this attraction results from a single energy level. This opens up a possibility of controlling the sign of the impurity interaction via the adjustment of the chemical potential. For many randomly distributed impurities (adatoms or vacancies) this may offer a way to achieve a controlled transition from aggregation to dispersion.