Liquid-phase catalytic growth of graphene

Shu Ping Lau,Libin Tang,Jinzhong Xiang,Pin Tian,Shouzhang Yuan,Lain-Jong Li,Kar Seng Teng,Dengquan Yang

doi:10.1039/d1tc04187h

Abstract

The liquid-phase catalytic growth of graphene is suitable for mass production with environment-friendliness, high yield, low cost and a wide choice of substrates.

Highlights

Graphene, a pioneer of two-dimensional materials, has attracted great scientific interests due to its excellent physical and chemical properties since its discovery by Andre Geim’s group[1]
The molecular self-assembly method is considered current state of the art technology due to facile, high-yield and scalable synthesis process[50] but it is limited by the choice of precursors that are required to meet a series of thermodynamic, kinetic, and structural criteria imposed by the dimensions and symmetry, the nature of the surface used as growth substrate, and technical limitations imposed by the UHV system used in fabrication[51], resulting in high production cost of graphene
After the introduction of iodine, the graphene quantum dots (GQDs) rapidly grew in size from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers and into graphene flakes as shown in High-resolution TEM (HRTEM) image of Fig. 1e-g

Summary

Introduction

A pioneer of two-dimensional materials, has attracted great scientific interests due to its excellent physical and chemical properties since its discovery by Andre Geim’s group[1]. The current solution based processing techniques, such as liquid phase stripping and redox methods, can produce graphene films and at very high yield, but they require the use of strong acids and alkali as well as highly toxic and explosive chemicals, which are very harmful to the environment These methods are unsuitable for industrial production of graphene for environmental reasons. Unlike conventional catalyst-based chemical vapor deposition method that requires elevated temperature to prepare graphene films[52], the liquid-phase catalysis method using iodine as catalyst can rapidly produce graphene at ambient temperature This method has many advantages, such as environment friendly, low cost, high yield, simple and rapid preparation process, low energy consumption, and wide choice of substrates. These graphene films prepared by the liquidphase catalysis method can find applications in the field of optoelectronics, such as photodetectors, solar cells and light-emitting diodes, as well as in other fields, such as energy storage, due to their interesting surface morphology

Results

Discussion

Methods