Liquid-Processed 2D Aromatic Amorphous Carbon: Defect Engineering and Universal Transport Scaling

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Solid State Physics

Background:

• 2D aromatic amorphous carbons with sp2 networks offer scalability and unique electronic transport.
• Graphene oxide's water processability presents an opportunity for scalable synthesis of 2D carbon materials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a deterministic method for producing graphene-derived 2D amorphous carbon thin films.
• To investigate the structural and electronic properties of these novel materials.

Main Methods:

• Combining water-processable graphene oxide with rapid thermal quenching.
• Utilizing X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Ultraviolet Photoelectron Spectroscopy (UPS) for chemical state analysis.
• Employing correlative structural and spectroscopic analyses to characterize defects.
• Conducting transport measurements to study electronic behavior.

Main Results:

• A kinetically trapped quasi-amorphous phase, quenched reduced graphene oxide (qRGO), was successfully produced.
• qRGO exhibits predominantly sp2 bonding, forming a distorted aromatic network.
• qRGO shows suppressed long-range order and boundary-like defects, distinct from nanocrystalline RGO.
• Electronic transport in qRGO is governed by variable-range hopping, characteristic of a strongly disordered regime.
• Both RGO and qRGO exhibit universal power-law scaling of resistivity.

Conclusions:

• Thermal-kinetic control over oxygen-driven defect formation is a scalable route to functional 2D amorphous carbon films.
• The developed method allows for precise tuning of material properties for specific applications.