No Arabic abstract
Mechanical exfoliation is a widely used method to isolate high quality graphene layers from bulk graphite. In our recent experiments, some ordered microstructures, consisting of a periodic alternation of kinks and stripes, were observed in thin graphite flakes that were mechanically peeled from highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). A theoretical model is presented in this paper to understand the formation of such ordered microstructures, based on elastic buckling of a graphite flake being subjected to a bending moment. The width of the stripes predicted from this model agrees reasonably well with our experimental measurements.
Two-particle spectroscopy with correlated electron pairs is used to establish the causal link between the secondary electron spectrum, the $(pi+sigma)-$plasmon peak and the unoccupied band structure of highly oriented pyrolitic graphite. The plasmon spectrum is resolved with respect to the involved interband transitions and clearly exhibits final state effects, in particular due to the energy gap between the interlayer resonances along the $Gamma$A-direction. The corresponding final state effects can also be identified in the secondary electron spectrum. Interpretation of the results is performed on the basis of density functional theory and tight binding calculations. Excitation of the plasmon perturbs the symmetry of the system and leads to hybridisation of the interlayer resonances with atom-like $sigma^*$ bands along the $Gamma A$-direction. These hybrid states have a high density of states as well as sufficient mobility along the graphite $c$-axis leading to the sharp $sim$3 eV resonance in the spectrum of emitted secondary electrons reported throughout the literature.
Recently, magnetic order in highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) induced by proton broad- and microbeam irradiation was discovered. Theoretical models propose that hydrogen could play a major role in the magnetism mechanism. We analysed the hydrogen distribution of pristine as well as irradiated HOPG samples, which were implanted to micrometer-sized spots as well as extended areas with various doses of 2.25 MeV protons at the Leipzig microprobe LIPSION. For this we used the sensitive 3D hydrogen microscopy system at the Munich microprobe SNAKE. The background hydrogen level in pristine HOPG is determined to be less than 0.3 at-ppm. About 4.8e15 H-atoms/cm^2 are observed in the near-surface region (4 um depth resolution). The depth profiles of the implants show hydrogen located within a confined peak at the end of range, in agreement with SRIM Monte Carlo simulations, and no evidence of diffusion broadening along the c-axis. At sample with microspots, up to 40 at-% of the implanted hydrogen is not detected, providing support for lateral hydrogen diffusion.
The transport properties of highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG) and polycrystal graphite have been studied. The electric conductivity of HOPG is several times larger than that of the polycrystal graphite. Along with the large magnetoresistances (MR), the polycrystal graphite show the accordant semiconductor-like character in a wide temperature (roughly range from 20K to 120K) under 0, 4, 8, 12 T applied magnetic field, while the magnetic-field-induced metal-semiconductor-like transition was only found in HOPG. The difference of transport properties originates from the Coulomb interaction quasipartical in HOPG graphite layers in contrast with the grain boundary scattering in the polycrystal graphite.
The authors proposed a simple model for the lattice thermal conductivity of graphene in the framework of Klemens approximation. The Gruneisen parameters were introduced separately for the longitudinal and transverse phonon branches through averaging over phonon modes obtained from the first-principles. The calculations show that Umklapp-limited thermal conductivity of graphene grows with the increasing linear dimensions of graphene flakes and can exceed that of the basal planes of bulk graphite when the flake size is on the order of few micrometers. The obtained results are in agreement with experimental data and reflect the two-dimensional nature of phonon transport in graphene.
We have investigated the variation in the magnetization of highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) after neutron irradiation, which introduces defects in the bulk sample and consequently gives rise to a large magnetic signal. We observe strong paramagnetism in HOPG, increasing with the neutron fluence. We correlate the induced paramagnetism with structural defects by comparison with density-functional theory calculations. In addition to the in-plane vacancies, the trans-planar defects also contribute to the magnetization. The lack of any magnetic order between the local moments is possibly due to the absence of hydrogen/nitrogen chemisorption, or the magnetic order cannot be established at all in the bulk form.