Water on graphene: Review of recent progress

Abstract

The sensitivity of graphene to the surrounding environment is given by its π electrons, which are directly exposed to molecules in the ambient. The high sensitivity of graphene to the local environment has shown to be both advantageous but also problematic for graphene-based devices, such as transistors and sensors, where the graphene carrier concentration and mobility change due to ambient humidity variations. In this review, recent progress in understanding the effects of water on different types of graphene, grown epitaxially and quasi-free standing on SiC, by chemical vapour deposition on SiO2, as well as exfoliated flakes, are presented. It is demonstrated that water withdraws electrons from graphene, but the graphene-water interaction highly depends on the thickness, layer stacking, underlying substrate and substrate-induced doping. Moreover, we highlight the importance of clear and unambiguous description of the environmental conditions (i.e. relative humidity) whenever a routine characterisation for carrier concentration and mobility is reported (often presented as a simple figure-of-merit), as these electrical characteristics are highly dependent on the adsorbed molecules and the surrounding environment.

37 pages, 15 figures

References in corpus (41)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• The electronic properties of graphene
• Large-Area Synthesis of High-Quality and Uniform Graphene Films on Copper Foils
• 30 inch Roll-Based Production of High-Quality Graphene Films for Flexible Transparent Electrodes
• Detection of Individual Gas Molecules Absorbed on Graphene
• Unimpeded permeation of water through helium-leak-tight graphene-based membranes
• Precise and ultrafast molecular sieving through graphene oxide membranes
• Tuneable Sieving of Ions Using Graphene Oxide Membranes
• Adsorption of H2O, NH3, CO, NO2, and NO on graphene: A first-principles study
• Charged Impurity Scattering in Graphene
• Graphene: A sub-nanometer trans-electrode membrane
• Quasi-free Standing Epitaxial Graphene on SiC by Hydrogen Intercalation
• Graphene Oxidation: Thickness Dependent Etching and Strong Chemical Doping
• Atmospheric Oxygen Binding and Hole Doping in Deformed Graphene on a SiO2 Substrate
• Molecular transport through capillaries made with atomic-scale precision
• Raman spectroscopy study of rotated double-layer graphene: Misorientation-angle dependence of electronic structure
• Carrier scattering, mobilities and electrostatic potential in mono-, bi- and tri-layer graphenes
• Surface energy engineering of graphene
• Graphene on a hydrophobic substrate: Doping reduction and hysteresis suppression under ambient conditions
• Evidence of the role of contacts on the observed electron-hole asymmetry in graphene
• Resistive Graphene Humidity Sensors with Rapid and Direct Electrical Readout
• First-principles studies of water adsorption on graphene: The role of the substrate
• Four-terminal magneto-transport in graphene p-n junctions created by spatially selective doping
• The quasi-free-standing nature of graphene on H-saturated SiC(0001)
• The Origin of Doping in Quasi-Free Standing Graphene on Silicon Carbide
• On the physisorption of water on graphene: a CCSD(T) study
• Water-Gated Charge Doping of Graphene Induced by Mica Substrates
• On the mechanism of hydrophilicity of graphene
• Symmetry Breaking in Few Layer Graphene Films
• Fast diffusion of water nanodroplets on graphene
• Charge transfer between epitaxial graphene and silicon carbide
• The environment of graphene probed by electrostatic force microscopy
• Ultra-sensitive Hall sensors based on graphene encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride
• Thickness dependent hydrophobicity of epitaxial graphene
• Tunable bandgap and magnetic ordering by adsorption of molecules on graphene
• Inducing energy gaps in graphene monolayer and bilayer
• Understanding Controls on Interfacial Wetting at Epitaxial Graphene: Experiment and Theory
• Wafer-scale Epitaxial Graphene Growth on the Si-face of Hexagonal SiC (0001) for High Frequency Transistors
• Atmospheric doping effects in epitaxial graphene: correlation of local and global electrical measurements
• Tuning epitaxial graphene sensitivity to water by hydrogen intercalation
• Tunable metal-insulator transitions in bilayer graphene by thermal annealing

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Detection of ultra-low concentration NO2 in complex environment using epitaxial graphene sensors
• Anomalous Freezing of Low Dimensional Water Confined in Graphene Nanowrinkles
• Humidity Sensing Properties of Different Atomic Layers of Graphene on SiO2/Si Substrate
• Good Practice Guide on the electrical characterisation of graphene using contact methods