Mitigating graphene etching on SiO_2 during fluorination by XeF_2

摘要

Fluorination is a promising functionalization method for bandgap opening in graphene on SiO2 substrates. Exposure to XeF2 is a simple approach among several techniques. However etching of the graphene layer occurs. We observed that the mechanism behind etching is the interaction of fluorine containing species with the underlying SiO2. Pulsed XeF2 exposure is shown to suppress etching, resulting in high-quality and homogeneous fluorographene in large areas. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.