Construction of Position-Controllable Graphene Bubbles in Liquid Nitrogen with Assistance of Low-Power Laser

Abstract

Graphene bubbles (GBs) are of significant interest owing to their distinguished electrical, optical, and magnetic properties. GBs can also serve as high-pressure reaction vessels to numerous chemical reactions. However, previous strategies to produce GBs are relatively elaborate and random. Therefore, their potential applications are severely restricted. Here, a facile and effective protocol is proposed to construct position-controllable GBs in liquid nitrogen (LN) with the assistance of laser and graphene wrinkles. Specifically, a film of graphene mounted on a SiO2 substrate (G@SiO2) is subjected to irradiation by a low-power laser in LN and then many GBs emerge from the surface of G@SiO2. Most impressively, the domain where GBs arise is the position of the laser beam spot. Hence, we demonstrated that the high collimation of laser facilitates the position definition of GBs. The microscopic results indicate that some GBs split into three parts when they were subjected to irradiation by an electron. Meanwhile, some GBs degenerate into pores with a diameter of 500 nm when they are exposed to air. To grasp the properties of GBs in depth, the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed, and the corresponding results indicate that temperature has very little impact on the GBs' shape. A phase transition process of the substance inside GBs is also revealed. Moreover, a two-dimensional (2D) solid nitrogen is discovered by MD simulations. The simplicity of our protocol paves the way to engineer high-pressure microreaction vessels and fabricate porous graphene membranes.