Repulsive van der Waals forces due to hydrogen exposure on bilayer graphene

We consider the effect of atomic hydrogen exposure to a system of two undoped sheets of graphene grown near a silica surface (the first adsorbed to the surface and the second freestanding near the surface). In the absence of atomic hydrogen, the van der Waals force between the sheets is attractive at all separations, causing the sheets to come closer together. However, with the addition of atomic hydrogen between the sheets, the long-range van der Waals interaction turns repulsive at a critical concentration. The underlying triple layer structure (SiO ₂-atomic hydrogen gas-air) gives rise to a long-range repulsion that at large-enough separations dominates over the more rapidly decaying attraction between the two-dimensional undoped graphene sheets (and between the outer graphene sheet and SiO ₂). This may be an avenue to tune the separation between two graphene sheets with the gas concentration. The doping of the graphene layers increases the attractive part of the interaction and hence reduces the net repulsive interaction.