J. Mater. Sci. Technol. ›› 2019, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (9): 1996-2002.DOI: 10.1016/j.jmst.2019.05.012

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Defective graphene as a high-efficiency Raman enhancement substrate

Tong Zhaoab, Zhibo Liu, Xing Xinab, Hui-Ming Chengabc, Wencai Renab*()   

  1. a Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
    b School of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang 110016, China
    c Shenzhen Geim Graphene Center, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI), Tsinghua University, 1001 Xueyuan Road, Shenzhen 518055, China
  • Received:2019-04-09 Online:2019-09-20 Published:2019-07-26
  • Contact: Ren Wencai
  • About author:

    1 These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract:

Pristine graphene (PG) has been demonstrated to be an excellent substrate for Raman enhancement, which is called graphene-enhanced Raman scattering. However, the chemically inert and hydrophobic surface of PG hinders the adsorption of molecules especially in aqueous solutions, and consequently limits the Raman enhanced efficiency. Here, we synthesized defective graphene (DG) films by chemical vapor deposition on Au, which has a defect density of ~2.0 × 1011 cm-2. The DG shows a much better wettability than PG towards dye solution. Combining with the strong adsorption ability of defects to molecules, DG shows greatly enhanced efficiency than PG with perfect lattice. For example, the detection limit for rhodamine B can reach 2 × 10-9 M for DG while it is on the order of 10-7 M for PG. In addition, DG has high enhancement uniformity and the Au substrate can be reused after electrochemical bubbling transfer. These advantages suggest the great potential of the DG grown on Au for practical applications in environmental monitoring.

Key words: Defective graphene, Raman enhancement, Chemical vapor deposition, Bubbling transfer