Reversible Photochemical Control of Doping Levels in Supported Graphene
Controlling the type and density of charge carriers in graphene is vital for a wide range of applications of this material in electronics and optoelectronics. To date, chemical doping and electrostatic gating have served as the two most established means to manipulate the carrier density in graphene. Although highly effective, these two approaches require sophisticated graphene growth or complex device fabrication processes to achieve both the desired nature and the doping densities with generally limited dynamic tunability and spatial control. Here, we report a convenient and tunable optical approach to tune the steady-state carrier density and Fermi energy in graphene by photochemically c…
Surface-Specific Spectroscopy of Water at a Potentiostatically Controlled Supported Graphene Monolayer
Knowledge of the structure of interfacial water molecules at electrified solid materials is the first step toward a better understanding of important processes at such surfaces, in, e.g., electrochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, and membrane biophysics. As graphene is an interesting material with multiple potential applications such as in transistors or sensors, we specifically investigate the graphene–water interface. We use sum-frequency generation spectroscopy to investigate the pH- and potential-dependence of the interfacial water structure in contact with a chemical vapor deposited (CVD) grown graphene surface. Our results show that the SFG signal from the interfacial water molecules a…
The ultrafast dynamics and conductivity of photoexcited graphene at different Fermi energies
The ultrafast dynamics and conductivity of photoexcited graphene can be explained using solely electronic effects.
Kinetic Ionic Permeation and Interfacial Doping of Supported Graphene
Due to its outstanding electrical properties and chemical stability, graphene finds widespread use in various electrochemical applications. Although the presence of electrolytes strongly affects its electrical conductivity, the underlying mechanism has remained elusive. Here, we employ terahertz spectroscopy as a contact-free means to investigate the impact of ubiquitous cations (Li+, Na+, K+, and Ca2+) in aqueous solution on the electronic properties of SiO2-supported graphene. We find that, without applying any external potential, cations can shift the Fermi energy of initially hole-doped graphene by ∼200 meV up to the Dirac point, thus counteracting the initial substrate-induced hole dop…