Authors
Daniel Gallego-Fuente, Jaime Colchero, Julio Gomez-Herrero, Pablo Ares
Published in
Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany). Pages e76609. Jul 17, 2026. Epub Jul 17, 2026.
Abstract
Adhesion stabilizes van der Waals materials and heterostructures, yet reported interaction strengths show a wide dispersion that hinders a consistent link between microscopic dispersive forces and macroscopic observables. Here, we determine clean-interface adhesion by measuring tip-sample interactions in ultrahigh vacuum using calibrated AFM probes of different radii, in situ thermal cleaning, and realistic contact distances. This approach isolates the dispersive interaction of clean interfaces and allows us to extract mixed Hamaker constants for SiO2 interacting with few-layer graphene (12 × 10-20 J), MoS2 (13 × 10-20 J), and SiO2 (6.1 × 10-20 J). Agreement between static adhesion spectroscopy and noncontact frequency-modulation AFM (FM-AFM) provides an internal consistency check of the interaction scale. Controlled humidity cycles further show that even very dry ambient conditions already enhance adhesion, while higher humidity produces a strong reversible increase associated with capillary forces, explaining one major contribution to the large spread of commonly reported values. These results establish clean-interface experimental benchmark values for dispersive interactions in representative layered materials, enabling quantitative comparison with dielectric-response and Lifshitz-based models that relate Hamaker constants to binding energy and macroscopic properties of van der Waals crystals.
PMID:
42467850
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Jul 2026.
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