From pencils to pineapples: finding honeycombs everywhere
From pencils to pineapples: finding honeycombs everywhere lead image
In both the natural and artificial world, honeycomb structures are ubiquitous. From bathroom tiles to turtle shells to pineapples, the patterns are visible and distinguishable at the macroscale. But honeycombs are also important at the atomic scale, where they make up the graphite inside pencils, for example.
Exploiting the unique properties of honeycombs can help inform new 2D materials. Gura et al. developed a tool to simplify the analysis of large datasets of images with regular or irregular honeycomb structures at any scale.
“In general, it is hard to spend a single day without identifying new applications of the honeycomb pattern,” said author Leonard Gura. “This is especially true when you work with these structures and are trained to see them everywhere.”
In particular, a subset structure, the kagome lattice, results in unique electronic properties in 2D materials. Examining large areas of this material and finding deviations from the lattice can reveal interesting phenomena.
To accomplish this, the team identified the central position of each honeycomb polygon in an image. The centers were connected to the centers of neighboring polygons and the overall structure was extracted using geometric considerations and mathematical graphs.
They used the tool on photos of bee-made honeycombs, corn cobs, and coral, as well as scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy images.
“The network detection can be applied to different length scales and can reveal interesting structural deviations,” said Gura. “We found similar structural features on very different length scales.”
The software, which includes a user-friendly interface, is open access and free to use or adapt. The group hopes it will be useful for structural network detection in many research areas.
Source: “The real honeycomb structure - from the macroscopic down to the atomic scale,” by Leonard Gura, Matthias Brinker, Patrik Marschalik, Florian Kalaß, Bettina Junkes, Heinz Junkes, Markus Heyde, and Hans-Joachim Freund, Journal of Applied Physics (2023). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0148421 .
