Scope and Limitations of Using Microemulsions for the Covalent Patterning of Graphene.

Patterning of graphene (functionalizing some areas while leaving others intact) is challenging, as all the C atoms in the basal plane are identical, but it is also desirable for a variety of applications, like opening a bandgap in the electronic structure of graphene. Several methods have been reported to pattern graphene, but most of them are very technologically intensive. Recently, we reported the use of microemulsions as templates to pattern graphene at the µm scale. This method is very simple and in principle tunable, as emulsions of different droplet size and composition can be prepared easily. Here, we explore in detail the scope of this methodology by applying it to all the combinations of four different emulsions and three different organic reagents, and characterizing the resulting substrates exhaustively through Raman, SEM and AFM. We find that the method is general, works better when the reactive species are outside the micelles, and requires reactive species that involve short reaction times.

Automated statistical analysis of raman spectra of nanomaterials.

Both at the academic and the industrial level, material scientists are exploring routes for mass production and functionalization of graphene, carbon nanotubes (CNT), carbon dots, 2D materials, and heterostructures of these. Proper application of the novel materials requires fast and thorough characterization of the samples. Raman spectroscopy stands out as a standard non-invasive technique capable of giving key information on the structure and electronic properties of nanomaterials, including the presence of defects, degree of functionalization, diameter (in the case of CNT), different polytypes, doping, etc. Here, we present a computational tool to automatically analyze the Raman spectral features of nanomaterials, which we illustrate with the example of CNT and graphene. The algorithm manages hundreds of spectra simultaneously and provides statistical information (distribution of Raman shifts, average values of shifts and relative intensities, standard deviations, correlation between different peaks, etc.) of the main spectral features defining the structure and electronic properties of the samples, as well as publication-ready graphical material.