journal article·2020-05-18Open access

A swift technique to hydrophobize graphene and increase its mechanical stability and charge carrier density

Lukas Madauß, Erik Pollmann, Tobias Foller, Jens Schumacher, Ulrich Hagemann, Tobias Heckhoff, Matthias Herder, Lucia Skopinski, Lars Breuer, Anke Hierzenberger, Alexandra Wittmar, Henning Lebius, Abdenacer Benyagoub, Mathias Ulbricht, Rakesh Joshi, Marika Schleberger

Abstract

Abstract Despite the improvement of the quality of CVD grown single-layer graphene on copper substrates, transferring the two-dimensional layer without introducing any unintentional defects still poses a challenge. While many approaches focus on optimizing the transfer itself or on necessary post-transfer cleaning steps, we have focused on developing a pre-treatment of the monolayer graphene on copper to improve the quality and reproducibility of the transfer process. By pressing an ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer foil onto the monolayer graphene on copper using a commercially available vacuum bag sealer graphene is stabilized by the attachment of functional carbon groups. As a result, we are able to transfer graphene without the need of any supporting layer in an all-H2O wet-chemical transfer step. Despite the general belief that the crumbling of graphene without a support layer in a H2O environment is caused due to differences in surface energy, we will show that this assumption is false and that this behavior is caused rather by the polar interactions between graphene and water. Suppressing these interactions protects graphene from ripping and results in extremely clean, highly crystalline graphene with a coverage close to 100%.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Graphene research and applications · Advancements in Battery Materials · Graphene and Nanomaterials Applications

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

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