Charge Transport in Polycrystalline Graphene: Challenges and Opportunities

Author(s)
Aron W. Cummings, Dinh Loc Duong, Van Luan Nguyen, Dinh Van Tuan, Jani Kotakoski, Jose Eduardo Barrios Vargas, Young Hee Lee, Stephan Roche
Abstract

Graphene has attracted significant interest both for exploring fundamental science and for a wide range of technological applications. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is currently the only working approach to grow graphene at wafer scale, which is required for industrial applications. Unfortunately, CVD graphene is intrinsically polycrystalline, with pristine graphene grains stitched together by disordered grain boundaries, which can be either a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, grain boundaries are expected to degrade the electrical and mechanical properties of polycrystalline graphene, rendering the material undesirable for many applications. On the other hand, they exhibit an increased chemical reactivity, suggesting their potential application to sensing or as templates for synthesis of one-dimensional materials. Therefore, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the structure and properties of graphene grain boundaries. Here, we review experimental progress on identification and electrical and chemical characterization of graphene grain boundaries. We use numerical simulations and transport measurements to demonstrate that electrical properties and chemical modification of graphene grain boundaries are strongly correlated. This not only provides guidelines for the improvement of graphene devices, but also opens a new research area of engineering graphene grain boundaries for highly sensitive electro-biochemical devices.

Organisation(s)
Physics of Nanostructured Materials
External organisation(s)
University of Helsinki, Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Journal
Advanced Materials
Volume
26
Pages
5079-5094
No. of pages
16
ISSN
0935-9648
Publication date
08-2014
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
210006 Nanotechnology, 103008 Experimental physics, 103009 Solid state physics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Mechanics of Materials, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science(all)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/charge-transport-in-polycrystalline-graphene-challenges-and-opportunities(bf2f30e3-06a5-410a-8059-42e4a4f4e4ad).html