We synthesized three-dimensional nanoporous graphene films by a chemical vapor deposition method with nanoporous copper as a catalytic substrate. The resulting nanoporous graphene has the same average pore size as the underlying copper substrate. Our surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) investigation indicates that the nanoporosity of graphene significantly improves the SERS efficiency of graphene as a substrate as compared to planar graphene substrates.
In this paper, we report our study on gold (Au) films with different thicknesses deposited on single layer graphene (SLG) as surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates for the characterization of rhodamine (R6G) molecules. We find that an Au
film with a thickness of ~7 nm deposited on SLG is an ideal substrate for SERS, giving the strongest Raman signals for the molecules and the weakest photoluminescence (PL) background. While Au films effectively enhance both the Raman and PL signals of molecules, SLG effectively quenches the PL signals from the Au film and molecules. The former is due to the electromagnetic mechanism involved while the latter is due to the strong resonance energy transfer from Au to SLG. Hence, the combination of Au films and SLG can be widely used in the characterization of low concentration molecules with relatively weak Raman signals.
The graphene-enhanced Raman scattering of Rhodamine 6G molecules on pristine, fluorinated and 4-nitrophenyl functionalized graphene substrates was studied. The uniformity of the Raman signal enhancement was studied by making large Raman maps. The rel
ative enhancement of the Raman signal is demonstrated to be dependent on the functional groups, which was rationalized by the different doping levels of pristine, fluorinated and 4-nitrophenyl functionalized graphene substrates. The impact of the Fermi energy of graphene and the phonon energy of the molecules was considered together for the first time in order to explain the enhancement. Such approach enables to understand the enhancement without assuming anything about the uniformity of the molecules on the graphene surface. The agreement between the theory and our measured data was further demonstrated by varying excitation energy.
Raman intensity of Rhodamine B (RhB) is enhanced by inserting a thin high k{appa} dielectric layer which reduces the surface plasmon damping at the gold-graphene interface. The results indicate that the Raman intensity increases sharply by plasmonic
resonance enhancement while maintaining efficient fluorescence quenching with optimized dielectric layer thickness.
The electronic structure of bilayer graphene is investigated from a resonant Raman study using different laser excitation energies. The values of the parameters of the Slonczewski-Weiss-McClure model for graphite are measured experimentally and some
of them differ significantly from those reported previously for graphite, specially that associated with the difference of the effective mass of electrons and holes. The splitting of the two TO phonon branches in bilayer graphene is also obtained from the experimental data. Our results have implications for bilayer graphene electronic devices.
Graphene is the two-dimensional (2d) building block for carbon allotropes of every other dimensionality. It can be stacked into 3d graphite, rolled into 1d nanotubes, or wrapped into 0d fullerenes. Its recent discovery in free state has finally provi
ded the possibility to study experimentally its electronic and phonon properties. Here we show that graphenes electronic structure is uniquely captured in its Raman spectrum that clearly evolves with increasing number of layers. Raman fingerprints for single-, bi- and few-layer graphene reflect changes in the electronic structure and electron-phonon interactions and allow unambiguous, high-throughput, non-destructive identification of graphene layers, which is critically lacking in this emerging research area.