2D hybrid material integrates graphene and silica glass for next-generation electronics

Some of the most promising materials for future technologies come in layers just one atom thick, such as graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, prized for its exceptional strength and conductivity. While hundreds of such materials exist, truly merging them into something new has remained a challenge. Most efforts simply stack these atom-thin sheets like a deck of cards, but the layers typically lack significant interaction between them.

An international team of researchers led by Rice University materials scientists has succeeded in creating a genuine 2D hybrid by chemically integrating two fundamentally different 2D materials—graphene and silica glass—into a single, stable compound called glaphene, according to a study published in Advanced Materials.

“The layers do not just rest on each other; electrons move and form new interactions and vibration states, giving rise to properties neither material has on its own,” said Sathvik Iyengar, a doctoral student at Rice and a first author on the study.

More importantly, Iyengar explained, the method could apply to a wide range of 2D materials, enabling the development of designer 2D hybrids for next-generation electronics, photonics and quantum devices.

“It opens the door to combining entirely new classes of 2D materials—such as metals with insulators or magnets with semiconductors—to create custom-built materials from the ground up,” Iyengar said.

The team developed a two-step, single-reaction method to grow glaphene using a liquid chemical precursor that contains both silicon and carbon. By tuning oxygen levels during heating, they first grew graphene then shifted conditions to favor the formation of a silica layer. This required a custom high-temperature, low-pressure apparatus designed over several months in collaboration with Anchal Srivastava, a visiting professor from Banaras Hindu University in India.

“That setup was what made the synthesis possible,” Iyengar said. “The resulting material is a true hybrid with new electronic and structural properties.”

Once the material was synthesized, the Rice team worked on confirming its structure with Manoj Tripathi and Alan Dalton at the University of Sussex. One of the first clues that glaphene was something new came from an anomaly. When the team analyzed the material using Raman spectroscopy—a technique that detects how atoms vibrate by measuring subtle shifts in scattered laser light—they found signals that did not match either graphene or silica. These unexpected vibrational features hinted at a deeper interaction between the layers.

In most 2D material stacks, the layers simply sit in place, held together weakly like magnets on a fridge door. But in glaphene, the layers lock together through much more than what are called weak van der Waals bonds, allowing electrons to flow between them and giving rise to entirely new behaviors.

To investigate further, Iyengar consulted Marcos Pimenta, an expert in spectroscopy based in Brazil. Ultimately, the anomaly turned out to be an artifact—an important reminder, Iyengar said, that even reproducible results must be treated with caution.

To better understand how the bonded layers behave at the atomic level, the team collaborated with Vincent Meunier at Pennsylvania State University to verify the experimental results against quantum simulations. These confirmed that the graphene and silica layers interact and bond in a unique way, partially sharing electrons across the interface. This hybrid bonding changes the material’s structure and behavior, turning a metal and an insulator into a new type of semiconductor.

“This was not something only one lab could do,” said Iyengar, who recently spent a year in Japan as a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and also an inaugural recipient of the Quad Fellowship, a program launched by the governments of the U.S., India, Australia and Japan to support early career scientists in exploring how science, policy and diplomacy intersect on the global stage. “This research was a cross-continental effort to create and understand a material nature does not make on its own.”

Pulickel Ajayan, Rice’s Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering and professor of materials science and nanoengineering, said that while the discovery of glaphene is significant on its own, what makes the research truly exciting is the broader method it introduces: a new platform for chemically combining fundamentally different 2D materials.

The research reflects a guiding principle Iyengar says he inherited from his adviser.

“Since I started my Ph.D., my adviser has encouraged me to explore mixing ideas that others hesitate to mix,” he said, quoting Ajayan, who is a corresponding author on the study alongside Meunier. “Professor Ajayan has also said that true innovation happens at the junctions of hesitation, and this project is proof of that.”