Scientific Achievement
New experimental and theoretical insights reveal how Argon ion clusters clean, modify, and mill supported and suspended graphene in a single tool.
Significance and Impact
Graphene applications necessitate material transfer, but the resulting contamination reduces performance. The ability to remove contamination, cut and modify the surface, and process large graphene sheet areas in a single tool will accelerate graphene research.
Research Details
–Previous cleaning approaches relied largely on annealing.
–All processing modalities (cleaning, modifying/functionalizing, milling) can now be consolidated in a single piece of equipment.
–Molecular dynamics simulations reveal the mechanisms behind the Argon ion cluster interaction with graphene, complementing the data obtained with in-situ measurements and electron microscopy.
S. Kim, A. V. Ievlev, J. Jakowski, I. V. Vlassiouk, X. Sang, C. Brown, O. Dyck, R. R. Unocic, S. V. Kalinin, A. Belianinov, B. G. Sumpter, S. Jesse, O. S. Ovchinnikova, "Multi-purposed Ar gas cluster ion beam processing for graphene engineering," Carbon 131, 142 (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2018.01.098
