Chemical vapor Deposition (CVD) Grown Graphene

FERNANDEZ, PABLO; THOMAS, J. E.; MARTINS, MARIA E.; MARMISOLLÉ, W. A.; MURGIDA, D.; SALVAREZZA, ROBERTO C.; IBAÑEZ, FRANCISCO J.

Córdoba

Congreso; 5to. Congreso Nacional - 4to. Congreso Iberoamericano HIDRÓGENO Y FUENTES SUSTENTABLES DE ENERGÍA; 2013

Recently, graphene (Gr) has raised tremendous interest in the field of nanocience.  Due to its unique physicochemical properties including cero (0) volume material with carbon atoms only localized on the surface (2600 m2g−1), superior electronic conductivity, and high stability makes this nanocarbon a good candidate for electrochemical applications. Among various syntheses we chose the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method because it is reproducible and yields to good quality single layer Gr of a desired area.  Usually, Gr oxide is employed as a platform for nanoparticles (NPs) decoration despite its poor quality.  In this work we explore several experimental conditions to obtain Gr using ethane as a precursor in a CVD reactor.  By varying the ethane flux and reactor temperature we obtained single layer Gr.  Recent studies by Gutés et. al. demonstrated a versatile and easy method to decorate CVD grown Gr with different metal NPs.  The procedure is simple as it fallows: a Gr sheet (on a Cu foil) is immersed in 1mM metal precursors solutions (KAuCl4, K2PtCl4 and K2PdCl4) for 1 minute and characterization performed by means of SEM.  However, microscopy data have shown some large particles or agglomerated NPs when decorated with Pt and Pd.  On the bases of their results, we use the same protocol but in order to prevent NPs agglomeration we incorporated polyacrylate (PA) to the precursor solution. This surfactant was chosen due to the weak interaction between PA and Pt atoms which allows easy NPs cleaning. AFM and Raman are being used as characterization tools.