Your Clean Graphene is Still Not Clean

Abstract

Efforts aimed at scaling fabrication processes to the level of single atoms, dubbed atom-by-atom fabrication or atomic fabrication, invariably encounter the obstacle of atomic scale cleanliness. When considering atomic fabrication, cleanliness of the base material and purity of the source reservoir from which atomic structures will be built are invariable constraints imposed by laws of physics and chemistry. As obvious as such statements may be, and regardless of the inevitable consequences for successful atomic fabrication, there is a poignant lack of understanding of the "dirt" (contamination/impurities). Here, we examine hydrocarbon contamination on graphene. Graphene has formed the base substrate for many e-beam-based atomic fabrication studies and many strategies for cleaning graphene have been presented in the literature. One popular method is heating to high temperatures (>500 °C). It is usually inferred that volatile hydrocarbons evaporate into the microscope vacuum system leaving behind pristine graphene. Here, we show through direct image intensity analysis that what appears to be clean graphene can be coated with a thin layer of dynamically diffusing hydrocarbons. This result holds significant implications for approaches to e-beam based atomic fabrication, updates the conceptual model of e-beam induced hydrocarbon deposition, and may extend to hot surfaces generally.

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