SEOUL, KOREA - Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology said on September 10 that its College of Natural Sciences professor Kim Kwanpyo, jointly with Lee Han-Bo-Ram (Incheon National University), and Zhenan Bao and Stacey F. Bent (Stanford University), succeeded in developing a technique to repair graphene's line defects by selectively depositing metal.
Graphene is pure carbon in the form of a very thin, nearly transparent sheet, one atom thick, with excellent mechanical and electrical properties. In order to apply graphene to photovoltaic cells, displays, or sensors, it must be made in large scales. But graphene tended to crack and produce boundary lines, making it difficult to maintain excellent material properties. To address this problem, there have been attempts to deposit metal on graphene surface, which was not effective as the metal deposition was not selective enough to defective parts.
By using platinum, the research team successfully demonstrated the selective deposition of metal at chemical vapor deposited graphene's line defects, notably grain boundaries, by atomic layer deposition. As a result, the team proved three times improved electrode and hydrogen gas sensors at room temperature. The research outcome was reported on the September 2 issue of Nature Communications.
Kim Kwanpyo, the principal author of the paper, said, "We used platinum in the latest experiment. But other metals such as gold and silver may be used in subsequent experiments to repair graphene defects and the applications may be expanded to other areas."
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