Investigation of plasma-assisted functionalization of pristine single layer graphene

Abstract

Investigations on the oxygen plasma treatment of graphene have been already reported in literature, but in this paper, as a novelty, we present a structural conversion of single layer graphene by O2 plasma treatment. Graphene Oxide is a chemically controlled graphene with hydroxyl, epoxy, carboxyl and carbonyl groups. Low O2 plasma treatment has been evidenced to be an efficient method to introduce defects and active groups in graphene structure with significantly contribution in biosensor area for detecting pathogens and biomolecules. Single Layer Graphene was grown on copper substrate by Chemical Vapor Deposition method and then transferred by wet chemical technique on gold substrate. Pristine Graphene was exposed to a downstream oxygen plasma and we have investigated the modification of the pristine graphene using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Raman Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform-Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), and X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) to examine the quality and structure modification of pristine graphene.