The ideal crystalline structure of a graphene layer
In the second part of my mid-year topical review round-up I look at this review by David Tománek who examines the many challenges researchers face when taking the exceptional graphene and its extraordinary electric and thermal properties from the 2D into the 3D world of devices and applications.
One of these challenges is the fabrication of graphene. While mechanical cleavage is traditionally used to produce monolayers of graphene this cannot be scaled up to an industrial level for technological applications. Other techniques, while escaping this problem, have disadvantages of their own. Chemical exfoliation is known to leave residue behind, and while great progress has been made with chemical vapour deposition, the monolayers created are at the expense of structural defects. These structural defects then affect the interface between the 2D monolayer and its 3D substrate, which have implications on the properties of the device.
Tomenek also discusses the other challenges involved, and the research being carried out to try and understand and overcome them. To find out more about the issues of graphitization and why contact is everything in nanoscale electronics, you can read the full review here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Image by Core Materials courtesy of AlexanderAIUS. Published under a CC BY 2.0 license.
Categories: Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
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