Graphene transfer with self-doping by amorphous thermoplastic resins

The wet transfer of graphene requires sacrificial layer, which can support graphene during the removal of metallic substrate and prevent mechanical damage of thin graphene. However, the used polymer layer leaves an amounts of debris or residue on the graphene surface. The typical amorphous thermoplastic resins that consist of macromolecular chains with no crosslinks between the chains have been investigated as sacrificial layers for transferring graphene grown on metallic substrate. We have observed that the strong interaction of graphene and polymer provides clean surface without a chuck of residues and largely diminishes wrinkles and folds of transferred graphene. In addition, due to the increased substrate coupling as well as uniform plausible covalent bonding, we have achieved significant amount of electron transfer from graphene. Thus, polymer-self-doped-graphene during the transfer process has no need for the additional doping process or annealing process in order to obtain clean and flat surface with reduced sheet resistance. No thermal budget makes graphene available towards flexible transparent device application. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.