Graphene nano-bubbles

Thanks to the wide range of its outstanding properties, graphene presents enormous potential technological applications. Such applications can be further expanded applying suitable strategies of stress engineering. The technology presented here allows producing noble gas nano-bubbles trapped below a graphene cap anchored to a nickel substrate. The nano-bubbles are produced starting from the graphene deposition on the nickel substrate and the subsequent low energy ion implantation of the Ar between the graphene layer and the nickel substrate. A final annealing leads to the formation of the nano-bubbles with a size smaller than 10 nm. The extremely high pressure of the gas inside the bubble (hundreds of kbar) induces a strain of the graphene lattice structure (10 - 15 %) capping the nano-bubbles.
Potential applications of this technology are the graphene stress engineering aimed at electronic properties and chemical reactivity modulation. Suitable transfer techniques from the substrate can be envisaged to produce graphene nano-disks with a narrow size distribution.

Staff: Fabio Ronci, Stefano Colonna, Roberto Flammini.