Intercalation and desorption of oxygen between graphene and Ru(0001) studied with helium ion scattering

Abstract

Graphene is a fascinating 2D material that is being widely investigated for use in electronic devices due to its unique electronic and materials properties. Also, because of its high thermal stability and inertness, it is considered a promising candidate for use as a protection layer for metal substrates. Here, graphene films grown on Ru(0001) are held at 600 K while reacted with oxygen (O${}_2$) and then investigated with helium low energy ion scattering (LEIS). LEIS spectra collected at different scattering angles confirm that oxygen does not adsorb to graphene, but instead intercalates between the graphene and the substrate. The intercalated O${}_2$ desorbs when the sample is annealed to 800 K. It is shown that this is a much lower temperature than is needed to remove chemisorbed atomic oxygen from Ru, thus inferring that the intercalated oxygen is molecular. During the desorption process, some of the graphene is etched away via a chemical reaction with the oxygen, with the proportion desorbing as O${}_2$ or reacting to etch the graphene being dependent on the amount of intercalated O${}_2$.

arXiv comment25 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Two-Dimensional Gas of Massless Dirac Fermions in Graphene
• Graphene: Status and Prospects
• Operation of Graphene Transistors at GHz Frequencies
• Decoupling Graphene from SiC(0001) via Oxidation
• Restoring a free-standing character of graphene on Ru(0001)

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Twistronics: A turning point in 2D quantum materials
• Oxygen-induced in-situ manipulation of the interlayer coupling and exciton recombination in Bi2Se3/MoS2 2D heterostructures
• Defect-induced oxygen adsorption on graphene films
• Neutralization of slow helium ions scattered from single crystalline aluminum and tantalum surfaces and their oxides
• The orientation of CO intercalated between graphene and Ru(0001)
• Mass-transport-limited reaction rates and molecular diffusion in the van der Waals gap beneath graphene