Imaging the reactivity and width of graphene's boundary region

Chem Commun (Camb). 2020 Aug 20;56(67):9612-9615. doi: 10.1039/d0cc02675a.

Abstract

The reactivity of graphene at its boundary region has been imaged using non-linear spectroscopy to address the controversy whether the terraces of graphene or its edges are more reactive. Graphene was functionalised with phenyl groups, and we subsequently scanned our vibrational sum-frequency generation setup from the functionalised graphene terraces across the edges. A greater phenyl signal is clearly observed at the edges, showing evidence of increased reactivity in the boundary region. We estimate an upper limit of 1 mm for the width of the CVD graphene boundary region.