Crystal structure change in multilayer GeH flakes by hydrogen desorption under ultrahigh vacuum environments

To confirm the feasibility of a theoretically proposed method of forming free-standing germanene [Araidai et al., J. Appl. Phys. 128 , 125301 (2020).], we experimentally investigated the hydrogen desorption properties of hydrogen-terminated germanane (GeH) flakes. Thermal desorption spectroscopy analysis revealed that hydrogen desorption occurred during heating under an ultrahigh vacuum environment corresponding to a mass loss of 1.0 wt%. Moreover, we have found that using an ultrahigh vacuum, ambient and short-time annealing for hydrogen desorption is a key to sustain the crystal structures.