Excited Carriers Relaxation and Hydrogen Dissociation on Hydrogenated Graphene: A Theory

Using \textit{ab initio} molecular dynamics coupled with time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), we show that the energy transfer of photo-excited carriers into atomic kinetic energy on hydrogenated graphene depends sensitively on the surface H coverage. Here, the energy transfer rate plays a crucial role in the determination of the H dissociation dynamics from graphene. In the low density ``isolated'' hydrogen atom limit, the energy transfer is significantly suppressed 80 fs after the excitation. Thus, it is difficult to dissociate hydrogen due to the faster energy dissipation from H into carbon backbone, despite that initially the H kinetic energy had increased to around 1.5 eV and the C-H bondlength had starched to 2.4 {\AA}. In sharp contrast, at the high-density graphane limit, an efficient energy transfer channel is established when the C-H bondlength exceeds 1.4 {\AA}. A fraction of the H readily dissociates within 15 fs. This is because ionized H forms a charged layer that expels, and as such accelerates the H ions with higher initial thermal velocities flying away. Our study thus reveals the importance of performing TDDFT calculations for excited carrier dynamics as from the widely adopted ground-state or constrained DFT dynamics one would expect the C-H bonds in graphane to be significantly stronger, due to full surface passivation, than that of isolated H.