Abstract
The combination of graphene with conductive nanoparticles, forming graphene–nanoparticle hybrid materials, offers a number of excellent properties for advanced engineering applications. A novel and simple method was developed to deposit 10 wt% tin-doped indium tin oxide (ITO) nanoparticles on graphene. The method involved a combination of a solution-based environmentally friendly electroless deposition approach and subsequent vacuum annealing. A stable organic-free solution of ITO was prepared from economical salts of In(NO3)3·H2O and SnCl4. The obtained ITO nanostructure exhibited a unique architecture, with uniformly dispersed 25–35 nm size ITO nanoparticles, containing only the crystallized In2O3 phase. The synthesized ITO nanoparticles–graphene hybrid exhibited very good and reproducible optical transparency in the visible range (more than 85%) and a 28.2% improvement in electrical conductivity relative to graphene synthesized by chemical vapor deposition. It was observed that the ITO nanoparticles affect the position of the Raman signal of graphene, in which the D, G, and 2D peaks were redshifted by 5.65, 5.69, and 9.74 cm−1, respectively, and the annealing conditions had no significant effect on the Raman signatures of graphene.
Highlights
Graphene is an ideal two-dimensional (2D) carbon allotrope with an sp2 honeycomb structure and has attracted attention since it was conclusively isolated from graphite in 2004 via an exfoliation method [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We present a novel, simple, and versatile method for the deposition of indium tin oxide (ITO) nanoparticles on graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method through a combination of a solution-based electroless deposition method and subsequent annealing
Graphene was grown by the CVD method, and an ITO solution was synthesized by the organic-additive-free aqueous sol–gel method with economical salts of In(NO3)3H2O and SnCl4
Summary
Graphene is an ideal two-dimensional (2D) carbon allotrope with an sp honeycomb structure and has attracted attention since it was conclusively isolated from graphite in 2004 via an exfoliation method [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The combination of graphene with conductive nanomaterials such as metal nanoparticles has led to the recent development of graphene–metal–nanoparticle hybrid structures aimed at additional improvement and manipulation of both the electronic and magnetic properties of graphene [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]. The incorporation of ITO with graphene has attracted considerable attention for the development of hybrid materials This hybrid material shows superior electrical conductivity over those of the intrinsic materials, owing to the enhancement of both the surface carrier charge mobility and carrier density of the hybrid material when graphene was incorporated with ITO [34]. The solution used as the ITO source was prepared using an environmentally friendly aqueous sol–gel and the concentration of Sn was adjusted to 10 wt% in the final ITO nanoparticles
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