TY - JOUR
T1 - Layer-dependent morphologies of silver on n-layer graphene
AU - Huang, Cheng wen
AU - Lin, Hsing Ying
AU - Huang, Chen Han
AU - Shiue, Ren Jye
AU - Wang, Wei Hua
AU - Liu, Chih Yi
AU - Chui, Hsiang Chen
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to acknowledge the support of this work from the National Science Council, Taiwan under contact numbers NSC 98-2112-M-006-004-MY3 and NSC100-2622-E-006-039-CC3. Ted Knoy is appreciated for his editorial assistance.
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - The distributions of sizes of silver nanoparticles that were deposited on monolayer, bilayer, and trilayer graphene films were observed. Deposition was carried out by thermal evaporation and the graphene films, placed on SiO2/Si substrates, were obtained by the mechanical splitting of graphite. Before the deposition, optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy were utilized to identify the number of the graphene layers. After the deposition, scanning electron microscopy was used to observe the morphologies of the particles. Systematic analysis revealed that the average sizes of the nanoparticles increased with the number of graphene layers. The density of nanoparticles decreased as the number of graphene layers increased, revealing a large variation in the surface diffusion strength of nanoparticles on the different substrates. The mechanisms of formation of these layer-dependent morphologies of silver on n-layer graphene are related to the surface free energy and surface diffusion of the n-layer graphene. The effect of the substrate such as SiO2/Si was investigated by fabricating suspended graphene, and the size and density were similar to those of supported graphene. Based on a comparison of the results, the different morphologies of the silver nanoparticles on different graphene layers were theorized to be caused only by the variation of the diffusion barriers with the number of layers of graphene.
AB - The distributions of sizes of silver nanoparticles that were deposited on monolayer, bilayer, and trilayer graphene films were observed. Deposition was carried out by thermal evaporation and the graphene films, placed on SiO2/Si substrates, were obtained by the mechanical splitting of graphite. Before the deposition, optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy were utilized to identify the number of the graphene layers. After the deposition, scanning electron microscopy was used to observe the morphologies of the particles. Systematic analysis revealed that the average sizes of the nanoparticles increased with the number of graphene layers. The density of nanoparticles decreased as the number of graphene layers increased, revealing a large variation in the surface diffusion strength of nanoparticles on the different substrates. The mechanisms of formation of these layer-dependent morphologies of silver on n-layer graphene are related to the surface free energy and surface diffusion of the n-layer graphene. The effect of the substrate such as SiO2/Si was investigated by fabricating suspended graphene, and the size and density were similar to those of supported graphene. Based on a comparison of the results, the different morphologies of the silver nanoparticles on different graphene layers were theorized to be caused only by the variation of the diffusion barriers with the number of layers of graphene.
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U2 - 10.1186/1556-276X-7-618
DO - 10.1186/1556-276X-7-618
M3 - Article
C2 - 23140587
AN - SCOPUS:84871031733
VL - 7
SP - 1
EP - 6
JO - Nanoscale Research Letters
JF - Nanoscale Research Letters
SN - 1931-7573
M1 - 618
ER -