Surface energy engineering of graphene

TL;DR

This study investigates how surface energy and wettability of epitaxial graphene on SiC can be engineered through plasma treatment, revealing that oxygen plasma can enhance wettability without damaging the graphene.

Contribution

It demonstrates that oxygen plasma treatment improves graphene's wettability without causing damage, offering a method to address adhesion issues in device fabrication.

Findings

Contact angle increases from 69° to 92° with graphene coverage.

No thickness dependence of contact angle across single to multi-layer graphene.

Low power oxygen plasma enhances wettability without damaging graphene.

Abstract

Contact angle goniometry is conducted for epitaxial graphene on SiC. Although only a single layer of epitaxial graphene exists on SiC, the contact angle drastically changes from 69{\deg} on SiC substrates to 92{\deg} with graphene. It is found that there is no thickness dependence of the contact angle from the measurements of single, bi, and multi layer graphene and highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). After graphene is treated with oxygen plasma, the level of damage is investigated by Raman spectroscopy and correlation between the level of disorder and wettability is reported. By using low power oxygen plasma treatment, the wettability of graphene is improved without additional damage, which can solve the adhesion issues involved in the fabrication of graphene devices.