Operability timescale of defect-engineered graphene

Defects in the lattice are of primal importance to tuning graphene chemical, thermal and electronic properties. The electron-beam irradiation technique is an easy method to induce defects in graphene following pre-designed patterns, but no systematic study of the time evolution of the resulting defects is available. In the paper “Operability timescale of defect-engineered graphene” published in the journal Surfaces and Interfaces, LESGO researchers at Istituto Nanoscienze CNR study the change over time of defected sites created in graphene with low-energy electron irradiation, using both the micro-Raman spectroscopy technique and molecular dynamics simulations.

The results of the study identify the timescale of the stability of the defect and establish the operability timespan of engineerable defect-rich graphene devices with applications in nanoelectronics. Moreover, by simulating the systems in the presence of atomic hydrogen (H), they point out the long-lasting chemical reactivity of the defective graphene, which can be exploited to functionalize graphene for sensing and energy storage applications.

Moreover, we also probed the reactivity of the defected carbon atoms that originated after the irradiation by simulating the systems in the presence of atomic hydrogen (H). Interestingly, the simulations revealed an increased reactivity with respect to pristine graphene also on long timescales, which is important in the case of graphene functionalization processes.