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Title: Insight into hydrogenation of graphene: Effect of hydrogen plasma chemistry

Journal Article · · Applied Physics Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4901226· OSTI ID:22310713
; ;  [1];  [2]; ;  [3]
  1. Research Center in Physics of Matter and Radiation (PMR), University of Namur, Namur (Belgium)
  2. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester (United Kingdom)
  3. School of Chemistry and Photon Science Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester (United Kingdom)

Plasma hydrogenation of graphene has been proposed as a tool to modify the properties of graphene. However, hydrogen plasma is a complex system and controlled hydrogenation of graphene suffers from a lack of understanding of the plasma chemistry. Here, we correlate the modifications induced on monolayer graphene studied by Raman spectroscopy with the hydrogen ions energy distributions obtained by mass spectrometry. We measure the energy distribution of H{sup +}, H{sub 2}{sup +}, and H{sub 3}{sup +} ions for different plasma conditions showing that their energy strongly depends on the sample position, pressure, and plasma power and can reach values as high as 45 eV. Based on these measurements, we speculate that under specific plasma parameters, protons should possess enough energy to penetrate the graphene sheet. Therefore, a graphene membrane could become, under certain conditions, transparent to both protons and electrons.

OSTI ID:
22310713
Journal Information:
Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 105, Issue 18; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English