Figure 1: Measuring and controlling chemical bond scission on graphene
From: Direct mechanochemical cleavage of functional groups from graphene
(a) Schematic of the AFM mechanochemical process where a scanning AFM tip with a known normal load removes chemical groups from a graphene sheet and measures the removal with lateral friction measurements. (b) A lateral friction scan on plasma OG with four areas reduced with increasing local contact stress and scan time. The desired friction level was set before mechanochemical processing. (c) A linescan of the four squares showing up to a 5 × reduction in friction due to the removal of oxygen groups. Load and scan time were tuned during the removal process to quickly reach the desired friction reduction, where higher loads and longer scan times led to faster and more complete removal of functional groups.
