Issue 5, 2021

Gold nanoparticle-mediated non-covalent functionalization of graphene for field-effect transistors

Abstract

Since its discovery, graphene has attracted much attention due to its unique electrical transport properties that can be applied to high-performance field-effect transistors (FETs). However, mounting chemical functionalities onto graphene inevitably involves the breaking of sp2 bonds, resulting in the degradation of the mechanical and electrical properties compared to pristine graphene. Here, we report a new strategy to chemically functionalize graphene for use in FETs without affecting the electrical performance. The key idea is to control the Fermi level of the graphene using the consecutive treatment of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and thiol-SAM (self-assembled monolayer) molecules, inducing positive and negative doping effects, respectively, by flipping the electric dipoles between AuNPs and SAMs. Based on this method, we demonstrate a Dirac voltage switcher on a graphene FET using heavy metal ions on functionalized graphene, where the carboxyl functional groups of the mediating SAMs efficiently form complexes with the metal ions and, as a result, the Dirac voltage can be positively shifted by different charge doping on graphene. We believe that the nanoparticle-mediated SAM functionalization of graphene can pave the way to developing high-performance chemical, environmental, and biological sensors that fully utilize the pristine properties of graphene.

Graphical abstract: Gold nanoparticle-mediated non-covalent functionalization of graphene for field-effect transistors

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 Jul 2020
Accepted
08 Jan 2021
First published
08 Jan 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale Adv., 2021,3, 1404-1412

Gold nanoparticle-mediated non-covalent functionalization of graphene for field-effect transistors

D. Shin, H. R. Kim and B. H. Hong, Nanoscale Adv., 2021, 3, 1404 DOI: 10.1039/D0NA00603C

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