Resilient, customized, and high-performing graphene on top of common glass

Brookhaven National Laboratory reports: Graphene, the two-dimensional powerhouse, packs extreme durability, electrical conductivity, and transparency into a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon. Despite being heralded as a breakthrough "wonder material," graphene has been slow to leap into commercial and industrial products and processes.

Now, scientists have developed a simple and powerful method for creating resilient, customized, and high-performing graphene: layering it on top of common glass. This scalable and inexpensive process helps pave the way for a new class of microelectronic and optoelectronic devices—everything from efficient solar cells to touch screens.

 

Left: Schematic of a graphene field-effect-transistor used in this study. The device consists of a solar cell containing graphene stacked on top of a high-performance copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) semiconductor, which in turn is stacked on an industrial substrate (either soda-lime glass, SLG, or sodium-free borosilicate glass, BSG). The research revealed that the SLG substrate serves as a source of sodium doping, and improved device performance in a way not seen in the sodium-free substrate. Right: A scanning electron micrograph of the device as seen from above, with the white scale bar measuring 10 microns, and a transmission electron micrograph inset of the CIGS/graphene interface where the white scale bar measures 100 nanometers. (from Brookhaven National Laboratory report)

 

The collaboration—led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), and the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at SUNY Polytechnic Institute—published their results February 12, 2016, in the journal Scientific Reports.[Free, Open Access]

 

For sure you already spotted teh Al2O3 dielectric on the picture and yes it is deposietd by ALD, as reported in the paper: "Next, a 200 nm top gate-dielectric layer (Al₂O₃) is blanket deposited on GR/CIGS/Mo/SLG(BSG) or GR/SLG(BSG) substrates via Atomic Layer Deposition at 1 Ǻ/cycle using (Tri Methyl Aluminum) TMA/Water precursor at 250 °C." The detailed process integration can be foudn in the Supporting information (insered below)

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