Two-beam-laser interference mediated reduction, patterning and nanostructuring of graphene oxide for the production of a flexible humidity sensing device

TWo-beam-laser interference was used for the simultaneous reduction, patterning and nanostructuring of graphene oxide on flexible polyethylene terephthalate substrates for the production of a high performance humidity sensing device. Hierarchical graphene nanostructures were formed after laser interference treatment of graphene oxide, which holds great promise for gaseous molecular adsorption, and thereby significantly increases their sensing performance. By tuning the laser power, the content of oxygen functional groups, could be changed within a certain range, which contributes not only controllable conductivity but also tunable response/recovery time of the humidity sensor due to the interaction between water molecules and oxygen functional groups on the graphene oxide sheets. The laser interference processing of graphene oxide films is a mask-free, surfactant-free and large-area approach to the production of hierarchical graphene micro-nanostructures, and thus shows great potential for fabrication of future graphene-based microdevices. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.