Relating the optical absorption coefficient of nanosheet dispersions to the intrinsic monolayer absorption

TL;DR

This paper derives a formula linking the optical absorption coefficient of nanosheet dispersions to the intrinsic monolayer absorption, enabling more accurate concentration measurements for 2D material suspensions.

Contribution

It introduces a new expression that relates nanosheet ensemble absorption to monolayer absorption, improving measurement accuracy for 2D materials.

Findings

Calculated absorption coefficients for graphene and MoS2 suspensions.

Provided a method to estimate monolayer absorption from suspension measurements.

Enhanced accuracy in nanosheet concentration determination.

Abstract

The concentration of nanosheet suspensions is an important technological parameter which is commonly measured by optical spectroscopy using the absorption coefficient to transform absorbance into concentration. However for all 2D materials, the absorption coefficient is poorly known, resulting in potentially large errors in measured concentration. Here we derive an expression relating the optical absorption coefficient of an isotropic ensemble of nanosheets to the intrinsic monolayer absorption. This has allowed us to calculate the absorption coefficients for suspensions of graphene, MoS2 and other 2D materials and allows estimation of the monolayer absorption for new materials from careful measurement of the suspension absorption coefficient.