Abstract
This paper reports a simple and controllable post-synthesis method for engineering the number of graphene layers based on oxygen plasma etching. Singular sheet etching (SSE) of graphene was achieved with the optimum process duration of 38 seconds. As a demonstration of this SSE process, monolayer graphene films were produced from bilayer graphenes. Experimental investigations verified that the oxygen plasma etching removes a single layer graphene sheet in an anisotropic fashion rather than anisotropic mode. In addition, etching via the oxygen plasma at the ground electrodes introduced fewer defects to the bottom graphene layer compared with the conventional oxygen reactive ion etching using the powered electrodes. Such defects can further be reduced with an effective annealing treatment in an argon environment at 900–1000°C. These results demonstrate that our developed SSE method has enabled a microelectronics manufacturing compatible way for single sheet precision subtraction of graphene layers and a potential technique for producing large size graphenes with high yield from multilayer graphite materials.
Highlights
The outstanding electronic, optical and physical properties [1,2,3,4,5] of graphene, atypical two-dimensional nano material have drawn tremendous attention from the scientific community for structuring electronic and photonic devices with higher performance in such applications as high-speed transistors, DNA sequencing, and biochemical sensors [6,7,8,9,10]
We developed a method for engineering the number of graphene layers with oxygen plasma that is simple and compatible with microelectronics manufacturing
Production of monolayer graphene films from bilayer graphene samples was demonstrated with our Singular sheet etching (SSE) processes
Summary
The outstanding electronic, optical and physical properties [1,2,3,4,5] of graphene, atypical two-dimensional nano material have drawn tremendous attention from the scientific community for structuring electronic and photonic devices with higher performance in such applications as high-speed transistors, DNA sequencing, and biochemical sensors [6,7,8,9,10]. Significant progress has been made in producing graphene with both high yield and large size Methods such as epitaxial synthesis [11], chemical vapor deposition [12,13], and chemical deoxidization [14] have been demonstrated for producing graphene of high quality. It is still a challenge for researchers to generate graphene with the desired number of graphene layers using the existing methods. The influence of the number of graphene layers on graphene’s electronic and optical properties has been reported by other researchers [16] To address this challenge, several efforts have been made towards realizing the layer engineering of graphene [1720]. Tour et al [21] reported the layerby-layer removal of graphene sheets using a wet etching method by coating graphene surfaces with zinc and dissolving the zinc with dilute acid, providing a promising method for engineering the number of graphene lay-
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