Imaging the reactivity and width of graphene's boundary region

AlSalem, Huda S and Al-Goul, Soha T and García-Miranda Ferrari, Alejandro and Brownson, Dale AC and Velarde, Luis and Koehler, Sven PK (2020) Imaging the reactivity and width of graphene's boundary region. Chemical Communications. ISSN 1359-7345

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Abstract

The reactivity of graphene at its boundary region has been imaged using non-linear spectroscopy to address the controversy whether the terraces of graphene or its edges are more reactive. Graphene was functionalised with phenyl groups, and we subsequently scanned our vibrational sum-frequency generation setup from the functionalised graphene terraces across the edges. A greater phenyl signal is clearly observed at the edges, showing evidence of increased reactivity in the boundary region. We estimate an upper limit of 1 mm for the width of the CVD graphene boundary region.