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Title: Nano-engineering the material structure of preferentially oriented nano-graphitic carbon for making high-performance electrochemical micro-sensors

Journal Article · · Scientific Reports
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  1. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States)
  2. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States); National Center for Nanotechnology and Semiconductors, Riyadh (Saudi Arabia)
  3. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  4. National Inst. for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba (Japan)

Direct synthesis of thin-film carbon nanomaterials on oxide-coated silicon substrates provides a viable pathway for building a dense array of miniaturized (micron-scale) electrochemical sensors with high performance. However, material synthesis generally involves many parameters, making material engineering based on trial and error highly inefficient. Here, we report a two-pronged strategy for producing engineered thin-film carbon nanomaterials that have a nano-graphitic structure. First, we introduce a variant of the metal-induced graphitization technique that generates micron-scale islands of nano-graphitic carbon materials directly on oxide-coated silicon substrates. A novel feature of our material synthesis is that, through substrate engineering, the orientation of graphitic planes within the film aligns preferentially with the silicon substrate. This feature allows us to use the Raman spectroscopy for quantifying structural properties of the sensor surface, where the electrochemical processes occur. Second, we find phenomenological models for predicting the amplitudes of the redox current and the sensor capacitance from the material structure, quantified by Raman. Our results indicate that the key to achieving high-performance micro-sensors from nano-graphitic carbon is to increase both the density of point defects and the size of the graphitic crystallites. Our study offers a viable strategy for building planar electrochemical micro-sensors with high-performance.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22); National Science Foundation (NSF); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan); National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0012704
OSTI ID:
1670660
Report Number(s):
BNL-219895-2020--JAAM
Journal Information:
Scientific Reports, Journal Name: Scientific Reports Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 10; ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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  • Marsden, Barry; Mummery, Andrew; Mummery, Paul
  • Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 474, Issue 2218 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2018.0075
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