No Arabic abstract
The new paradigm of heterostructures based on two-dimensional (2D) atomic crystals has already led to the observation of exciting physical phenomena and creation of novel devices. The possibility of combining layers of different 2D materials in one stack allows unprecedented control over the electronic and optical properties of the resulting material. Still, the current method of mechanical transfer of individual 2D crystals, though allowing exceptional control over the quality of such structures and interfaces, is not scalable. Here we show that such heterostructures can be assembled from chemically exfoliated 2D crystals, allowing for low-cost and scalable methods to be used in the device fabrication.
We report the exfoliation of graphite in aqueous solutions under high shear rate [$sim10^8s^{-1}$] turbulent flow conditions, with a 100% exfoliation yield. The material is stabilized without centrifugation at concentrations up to 100 g/L using carboxymethylcellulose sodium salt to formulate conductive printable inks. The sheet resistance of blade coated films is below$sim2Omega/square$. This is a simple and scalable production route for graphene-based conductive inks for large area printing in flexible electronics.
Fully exploiting the properties of 2D crystals requires a mass production method able to produce heterostructures of arbitrary complexity on any substrate, including plastic. Solution processing of graphene allows simple and low-cost techniques such as inkjet printing to be used for device fabrication. However, available inkjet printable formulations are still far from ideal as they are either based on toxic solvents, have low concentration, or require time-consuming and expensive formulation processing. In addition, none of those formulations are suitable for thin-film heterostructure fabrication due to the re-mixing of different 2D crystals, giving rise to uncontrolled interfaces, which results in poor device performance and lack of reproducibility. In this work we show a general formulation engineering approach to achieve highly concentrated, and inkjet printable water-based 2D crystal formulations, which also provides optimal film formation for multi-stack fabrication. We show examples of all-inkjet printed heterostructures, such as large area arrays of photosensors on plastic and paper and programmable logic memory devices, fully exploiting the design flexibility of inkjet printing. Finally, dose-escalation cytotoxicity assays in vitro also confirm the inks biocompatible character, revealing the possibility of extending use of such 2D crystal formulations to drug delivery and biomedical applications.
This work is the first step towards understanding thermionic transport properties of graphene/phosphorene/graphene van der Waals heterostructures in contact with gold electrodes by using density functional theory based first principles calculations combined with real space Greens function formalism. We show that for monolayer phosphorene in the heterostructure, quantum tunneling dominates the transport. By adding more phosphorene layers, one can switch from tunneling dominated transport to thermionic dominated transport, resulting in transporting more heat per charge carrier, thus, enhancing the cooling coefficient of performance. The thermionic coefficient of performance for the proposed device is 18.5 at 600 K corresponding to an equivalent ZT of 0.13, which is significant for nanoscale devices.
A simple one-stage solution-based method was developed to produce graphene nanoribbons by sonicating graphite powder in organic solutions with polymer surfactant. The graphene nanoribbons were deposited on silicon substrate, and characterized by Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Single-layer and few-layer graphene nanoribbons with a width ranging from sub-10 nm to tens of nm and length ranging from hundreds of nm to 1 {mu}m were routinely observed. Electrical transport properties of individual graphene nanoribbons were measured in both the back-gate and polymer-electrolyte top-gate configurations. The mobility of the graphene nanoribbons was found to be over an order of magnitude higher when measured in the latter than in the former configuration (without the polymer electrolyte), which can be attributed to the screening of the charged impurities by the counter-ions in the polymer electrolyte. This finding suggests that the charge transport in these solution-produced graphene nanoribbons is largely limited by charged impurity scattering.
Polarized Raman spectra of the epitaxial Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 film, bi-color BaTiO3/Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 superlattice, and tri-color BaTiO3/Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3/SrTiO3 superlattice were studied in a broad temperature range of 80-700 K. Based on the temperature dependence of the polar modes we determined the phase transitions temperatures in the studied heterostructures. In the sub-THz frequency range of the Y(XZ)Y spectra, we revealed the coexistence of the Debye-type central peak and soft mode in bi-color BaTiO3/Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 superlattice.