Breakdown of Universal Scaling for Nanometer-Sized Bubbles in Graphene.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34519503.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c02470 and PMC identifier 9286314.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
We report the formation of nanobubbles on graphene with a radius of the order of 1 nm, using ultralow energy implantation of noble gas ions (He, Ne, Ar) into graphene grown on a Pt(111) surface. We show that the universal scaling of the aspect ratio, which has previously been established for larger bubbles, breaks down when the bubble radius approaches 1 nm, resulting in much larger aspect ratios. Moreover, we observe that the bubble stability and aspect ratio depend on the substrate onto which the graphene is grown (bubbles are stable for Pt but not for Cu) and trapped element. We interpret these dependencies in terms of the atomic compressibility of the noble gas as well as of the adhesion energies between graphene, the substrate, and trapped atoms.