School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, 2066 Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, 16419, Republic of Korea.
School of Chemistry, Sungkyunkwan University, 2066 Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, 16419, Republic of Korea.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 26;7(1):2462. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02430-8.
The electronic and optical properties of graphene are greatly dependent on the the number of layers. For the precise control of the graphene layers, atomic layer etching (ALE), a cyclic etching method achieved through chemical adsorption and physical desorption, can be the most powerful technique due to barely no damage and no contamination. In this study, we demonstrated the ALE process of graphene layers without noticeably damaging the graphene by using a controlled low energy oxygen (O/O)-ion for chemical adsorption and a low energy Ar-ion (11.2 eV) for physical desorption. In addition, using a trilayer graphene, mono- and bi-layer graphene could be successfully fabricated after one- and two-cycle ALE of the trilayer graphene, respectively. We believe that the ALE technique presented herein can be applicable to all layered materials such as graphene, black phosphorous and transition metal dichalcogenides which are important for next generation electronic devices.
石墨烯的电子和光学性质在很大程度上取决于其层数。对于石墨烯层的精确控制，原子层蚀刻（ALE）是一种通过化学吸附和物理解吸实现的循环蚀刻方法，由于几乎没有损伤和污染，因此它可能是最强大的技术。在这项研究中，我们通过使用受控的低能量氧（O/O）离子进行化学吸附和低能量 Ar 离子（11.2 eV）进行物理解吸，证明了不会对石墨烯造成明显损伤的石墨烯层 ALE 过程。此外，使用三层石墨烯，在对三层石墨烯进行一次和两次 ALE 后，分别成功地制造出了单层和双层石墨烯。我们相信，本文提出的 ALE 技术可适用于所有层状材料，如对下一代电子设备很重要的石墨烯、黑磷和过渡金属二卤化物。
