Self‐Limited Oxidation: A Route to Form Graphene Layers from Graphite by One‐Step Heating

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Graphene, a monolayer of sp 2 -bonded carbon atoms, has inspired great enthusiasm since it was successfully isolated from graphite in 2004 [ 1 ] and especially after the reports of its exceptional relativistic quantum Hall effect in 2005. [ 2 , 3 ] The novel electronic properties involving ballistic transport, massless Dirac fermionlike charge carriers, [ 2 ] and Berry’s phase [ 3 ] in graphene make this two-dimensional material a promising candidate for fundamental studies and nanoelectronics. As such, intensive efforts have been afforded to the formation of graphene layers. Some methods have been developed based on two strategies: top down, such as mechanical exfoliation, [ 1 ] evaporating Si atoms from bulk SiC, [ 4–6 ] and chemically assisted exfoliation of graphene sheets from bulk graphite; [ 7–9 ] and bottom up, such as growth of graphene layers on single or polycrystalline metals. [ 10–13 ] Although these methods have their own certain advantages, the extremely fast growth of the demand for graphene layers for various types of fundamental and practical studies strongly urges researchers to develop more novel methods for fabrication of graphene layers. Herein, we demonstrate a simple yet effi cient approach for the formation of graphene layers under the top-down scheme. Our results clearly reveal that graphene layers of good crystal quality could be readily formed by self-limited oxidation of graphite fl akes through a one-step annealing