A photochemical approach for a fast and self-limited covalent modification of surface supported graphene with photoactive dyes

• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/aabf11
• Publication Date: 2018-04-18T12:51:01Z
• Authors: Natalia N Sergeeva; Alexander N Chaika; Brian Walls; Barry E Murphy; Killian Walshe; David P Martin; Billy D O Richards; Gin Jose; Karsten Fleischer; Victor Yu Aristov; Olga V Molodtsova; Igor V Shvets; Sergey A Krasnikov
• Keywords: Phenazine; Overlayer; Surface Modification

Herein, we report a simple method for covalent modification of surface supported graphene with photoactive dyes. Graphene was fabricated on cubic-SiC/Si(001) wafers due to their low cost and suitability mass-production continuous fit electronic applications millimetre scale. Functionalisation the carried out in solution via white light induced photochemical generation phenazine radicals from diazonium salt. The resulting covalently bonded phenazine-graphene hybrid structure characterised by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) spectroscopy (STS), Raman density functional theory (DFT) calculations. It found that molecules form an overlayer, which exhibit short range order rectangular unit cell surface. DFT calculations based STM results reveal are standing up overlayer maximum coverage 0.25 per cell. show growth is limited one monolayer molecules. STS reveals has band gap 0.8 eV.