Etchant-free graphene transfer using facile intercalation of alkanethiol self-assembled molecules at graphene/metal interfaces.

We report a novel etchant-free transfer method of graphene using the intercalation of alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) at the graphene/Cu interfaces. The early stage of intercalation proceeds through graphene grain boundaries or defects within a few seconds at room temperature until stable SAMs are formed after a few hours. The formation of SAMs releases the compressive strain of graphene induced by Cu substrates and make graphene slightly n-doped due to the formation of interface dipoles of the SAMs on metal surfaces. After SAM formation, the graphene is easily delaminated off from the metal substrates and transferred onto insulating substrates. The etchant-free process enables us to decrease the density of charged impurities and the magnitude of potential fluctuation in the transferred graphene, which suppress scattering of carriers. We also demonstrate the removal of alkanethiol SAMs and reuse the substrate. This method will dramatically reduce the cost of graphene transfer, which will benefit industrial applications such as of graphene transparent electrodes.

Topological Raman band in the carbon nanohorn.

Raman spectroscopy has been used in chemistry and physics to investigate the fundamental process involving light and phonons. The carbon nanohorn introduces a new subject to Raman spectroscopy, namely topology. We show theoretically that a photoexcited carrier with a nonzero winding number activates a topological D Raman band through the Aharonov-Bohm effect. The topology-induced D Raman band can be distinguished from the ordinary D Raman band for a graphene edge by its peak position.

Experimental demonstration of the time reversal Aharonov-Casher effect.

We demonstrate the time reversal Aharonov-Casher (AC) effect in small arrays of mesoscopic semiconductor rings. By using an electrostatic gate we can control the spin precession rate and follow the AC phase over several interference periods. We show that we control the precession rate in two different gate voltage ranges; in the lower range the gate voltage dependence is strong and linear and in the higher range the dependence in almost an order of magnitude weaker. We also see the second harmonic of the AC interference, oscillating with half the period. We finally map the AC phase to the spin-orbit interaction parameter alpha and find it is consistent with Shubnikov-de Haas analysis.