  Recent experiment demonstrated the formation of free-standing Au monolayers
by exposing Au-Ag alloy to electron beam irradiation. Inspired by this
discovery, we used semi-empirical effective medium theory simulations to
investigate monolayer formation in 30 different binary metal alloys composed of
late d-series metals Ni, Cu, Pd, Ag, Pt, and Au. In qualitative agreement with
the experiment, we find that the beam energy required to dealloy Ag atoms from
Au-Ag alloy is smaller than the energy required to break the dealloyed Au
monolayer. Our simulations suggest that similar method could also be used to
form Au monolayers from Au-Cu alloy and Pt monolayers from Pt-Cu, Pt-Ni, and
Pt-Pd alloys.
