Ultrafast Growth of Nanocrystalline Graphene Films by Quenching and Grain-size-dependent Strength and Bandgap Opening

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Oct 26

PMID 31649240

Citations 7

Authors

Tong Zhao

Chuan Xu

Wei Ma

Zhibo Liu

Tianya Zhou

Zhen Liu

Shun Feng

Mengjian Zhu

Ning Kang

Dong-Ming Sun

Hui-Ming Cheng

Wencai Ren

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Nanocrystallization is a well-known strategy to dramatically tune the properties of materials; however, the grain-size effect of graphene at the nanometer scale remains unknown experimentally because of the lack of nanocrystalline samples. Here we report an ultrafast growth of graphene films within a few seconds by quenching a hot metal foil in liquid carbon source. Using Pt foil and ethanol as examples, four kinds of nanocrystalline graphene films with average grain size of ~3.6, 5.8, 8.0, and 10.3 nm are synthesized. It is found that the effect of grain boundary becomes more pronounced at the nanometer scale. In comparison with pristine graphene, the 3.6 nm-grained film retains high strength (101 GPa) and Young's modulus (576 GPa), whereas the electrical conductivity is declined by over 100 times, showing semiconducting behavior with a bandgap of ~50 meV. This liquid-phase precursor quenching method opens possibilities for ultrafast synthesis of typical graphene materials and other two-dimensional nanocrystalline materials.

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