New method developed for measuring thermal expansion in ‘atomically thin’ materials

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Seoul National University in South Korea have developed a way to directly measure such materials' thermal expansion coefficient, the rate at which the material expands as it heats. Due to the thinness of two-dimensional materials, until now, measuring their thermal expansion could only be accomplished indirectly or with the use of a support structure called a substrate. The work was conducted at the Molecular Foundry, a user facility at LBNL, and the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a user facility at LANL and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories.