Lei Fu

Extremely Weak van der Waals Coupling in Vertical ReS2 Nanowalls for High-Current-Density Lithium-Ion Batteries.

The synthesis of vertical ReS2 nanowalls on 3D graphene foam (V-ReS2 /3DGF) is demonstrated by a chemical vapor deposition route. The vertical nanowall structure leads to an effective exposure of active sites and enhances the lithium interaction with all of the layers. When serving as the anode material for lithium-ion batteries, the V-ReS2 /3DGF composite demonstrates excellent cycling stability at high-current-density.

CVD Growth of Large Area Smooth-edged Graphene Nanomesh by Nanosphere Lithography

Current etching routes to process large graphene sheets into nanoscale graphene so as to open up a bandgap tend to produce structures with rough and disordered edges. This leads to detrimental electron scattering and reduces carrier mobility. In this work, we present a novel yet simple direct-growth strategy to yield graphene nanomesh (GNM) on a patterned Cu foil via nanosphere lithography. Raman spectroscopy and TEM characterizations show that the as-grown GNM has significantly smoother edges than post-growth etched GNM. More importantly, the transistors based on as-grown GNM with neck widths of 65-75u2005nm have a near 3-fold higher mobility than those derived from etched GNM with the similar neck widths.

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Anchored Fe3O4 Nanoparticles on Graphene Foam and Lithium Battery Performance

Magnetite (Fe3O4) is an attractive electrode material due to its high theoretical capacity, eco-friendliness, and natural abundance. However, its commercial application in lithium-ion batteries is still hindered by its poor cycling stability and low rate capacity resulting from large volume expansion and low conductivity. We present a new approach which makes use of supercritical carbon dioxide to efficiently anchor Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) on graphene foam (GF), which was obtained by chemical vapor deposition in a single step. Without the use of any surfactants, we obtain moderately spaced Fe3O4 NPs arrays on the surface of GF. The particle size of the Fe3O4 NPs exhibits a narrow distribution (11 ± 4 nm in diameter). As a result, the composites deliver a high capacity of about 1200 mAh g(-1) up to 500 cycles at 1 C (924 mAh g(-1)) and about 300 mAh g(-1) at 20 C, which reaches a record high using Fe3O4 as anode material for lithium-ion batteries.

Carbide-Forming Groups IVB-VIB Metals: A New Territory in the Periodic Table for CVD Growth of Graphene

Early transition metals, especially groups IVB-VIB metals, can form stable carbides, which are known to exhibit excellent noble-metal-like catalytic activities. We demonstrate herein the applications of groups IVB-VIB metals in graphene growth using atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition technique. Similar to the extensively studied Cu, Ni, and noble metals, these transition-metal foils facilitate the catalytic growth of single- to few-layer graphene. The most attractive advantage over the existing catalysts is their perfect control of layer thickness and uniformity with highly flexible experimental conditions by in situ converting the dissolved carbons into stable carbides to fully suppress the upward segregation/precipitation effect. The growth performance of graphene on these transition metals can be well explained by the periodic physicochemical properties of elements. Our work has disclosed a new territory of catalysts in the periodic table for graphene growth and is expected to trigger more interest in graphene research.

Direct Growth of Ultrafast Transparent Single‐Layer Graphene Defoggers

The idea flat surface, superb thermal conductivity and excellent optical transmittance of single-layer graphene promise tremendous potential for graphene as a material for transparent defoggers. However, the resistance of defoggers made from conventional transferred graphene increases sharply once both sides of the film are covered by water molecules which, in turn, leads to a temperature drop that is inefficient for fog removal. Here, the direct growth of large-area and continuous graphene films on quartz is reported, and the first practical single-layer graphene defogger is fabricated. The advantages of this single-layer graphene defogger lie in its ultrafast defogging time for relatively low input voltages and excellent defogging robustness. It can completely remove fog within 6 s when supplied a safe voltage of 32 V. No visible changes in the full defogging time after 50 defogging cycles are observed. This outstanding performance is attributed to the strong interaction forces between the graphene films and the substrates, which prevents the permeation of water molecules. These directly grown transparent graphene defoggers are expected to have excellent prospects in various applications such as anti-fog glasses, auto window and mirror defogging.

Direct Growth of MoS2/h-BN Heterostructures via a Sulfide-Resistant Alloy

Improved properties arise in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) materials when they are stacked onto insulating hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Therefore, the scalable fabrication of TMDCs/h-BN heterostructures by direct chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth is highly desirable. Unfortunately, to achieve this experimentally is challenging. Ideal substrates for h-BN growth, such as Ni, become sulfides during the synthesis process. This leads to the decomposition of the pregrown h-BN film, and thus no TMDCs/h-BN heterostructure forms. Here, we report a thoroughly direct CVD approach to obtain TMDCs/h-BN vertical heterostructures without any intermediate transfer steps. This is attributed to the use of a nickel-based alloy with excellent sulfide-resistant properties and a high catalytic activity for h-BN growth. The strategy enables the direct growth of single-crystal MoS2 grains of up to 200 μm(2) on h-BN, which is approximately 1 order of magnitude larger than that in previous reports. The direct band gap of our grown single-layer MoS2 on h-BN is 1.85 eV, which is quite close to that for free-standing exfoliated equivalents. This strategy is not limited to MoS2-based heterostructures and so allows the fabrication of a variety of TMDCs/h-BN heterostructures, suggesting the technique has promise for nanoelectronics and optoelectronic applications.

Programmable Sub-nanometer Sculpting of Graphene with Electron Beams

Electron beams in transmission electron microscopes are very attractive to engineer and pattern graphene toward all-carbon device fabrication. The use of condensed beams typically used for sequential raster imaging is particularly exciting since they potentially provide high degrees of precision. However, technical difficulties, such as the formation of electron beam induced deposits on sample surfaces, have hindered the development of this technique. We demonstrate how one can successfully use a condensed electron beam, either with or without C(s) correction, to structure graphene with sub-nanometer precision in a programmable manner. We further demonstrate the potential of the developed technique by combining it with an established route to engineer graphene nanoribbons to single-atom carbon chains.

Multiwall nanotubes with intramolecular junctions (CNx/C): Preparation, rectification, logic gates, and application

We prepared a large quantity of multiwall nanotubes with intramolecular junctions (CNx/C) by pyrolysis of iron phthalocyanine with or without an inlet of ammonia gas. The nanotubes consist of two sections, one section made of carbon nitride featuring bamboo-like structure and the other one made of carbon featuring empty hollow cylinder structure, and thus the intramolecular junctions were formed in the middle as a result of being doped or undoped with nitrogen. Nanodiode based on a single CNx/C junction shows reproducible rectifying behavior with a rectification ratio of 1.3×103 at ±2 V. In addition, the nanodiode demonstrated as a half-wave rectifier worked at an input sine wave of 1 kHz. Two CNx/C junctions were configured together to exhibit functions of OR and AND logic gates. Moreover, after substituting the wave-detection silicon diode in common transistor radio set with our nanodiode, the radio set still worked normally, representing an important step toward the potential application for nano-scale...

High-mobility graphene on liquid p-block elements by ultra-low-loss CVD growth

The high-quality and low-cost of the graphene preparation method decide whether graphene is put into the applications finally. Enormous efforts have been devoted to understand and optimize the CVD process of graphene over various d-block transition metals (e.g. Cu, Ni and Pt). Here we report the growth of uniform high-quality single-layer, single-crystalline graphene flakes and their continuous films over p-block elements (e.g. Ga) liquid films using ambient-pressure chemical vapor deposition. The graphene shows high crystalline quality with electron mobility reaching levels as high as 7400u2005cm2 V−1s−1 under ambient conditions. Our employed growth strategy is ultra-low-loss. Only trace amounts of Ga are consumed in the production and transfer of the graphene and expensive film deposition or vacuum systems are not needed. We believe that our research will open up new territory in the field of graphene growth and thus promote its practical application.

Twinned growth behaviour of two-dimensional materials

Twinned growth behaviour in the rapidly emerging area of two-dimensional nanomaterials still remains unexplored although it could be exploited to fabricate heterostructure and superlattice materials. Here we demonstrate how one can utilize the twinned growth relationship between two two-dimensional materials to construct vertically stacked heterostructures. As a demonstration, we achieve 100% overlap of the two transition metal dichalcogenide layers constituting a ReS2/WS2 vertical heterostructure. Moreover, the crystal size of the stacked structure is an order of magnitude larger than previous reports. Such twinned transition metal dichalcogenides vertical heterostructures exhibit great potential for use in optical, electronic and catalytic applications. The simplicity of the twinned growth can be utilized to expand the fabrication of other heterostructures or two-dimensional material superlattice and this strategy can be considered as an enabling technology for research in the emerging field of two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures.