Physics Research: Graphene Layering

During my time at Wentworth Institute of Technology, I played a role in the exploration of new imaging techniques for the ultra-thin material known as graphene. Our paper was submitted to the American Journal of Physics for publication and is pending review.

Graphene: Monolayer Magic

Graphene has been a hot topic in the field of material science since its discovery in 2004. Characterized by a single layer of carbon atoms, it forms into sheets oriented into a hexagonal lattice which promotes interesting stress and strain, optical, and electromechanical properties.

Our research explored a potential new and cheaper way to verify the layer number of a given piece of graphene. By analyzing the difference in image contrast of a graphene flake on a silicon oxide chip, one can calculate the layer number.

My Role

My responsibility involved creating/modifying the computer code that generates a wavelength vs. graphene thickness vs. contrast gradient plot, along with taking real-time measurements of various graphene flakes.

Parsing through hundreds of lines of code, I converted a vast data set of index of refraction values of graphene into matrices from MATLAB to Python that a variety of mathematical operations were performed on. The image (right) was the outputted gradient plot which was critical in determining the layer number of our experimental results.

Correlative Results

The image (Below) shows a single horizontal slice of the gradient plot above. The dark black lines correspond to the theoretical gradient lines while the colored dots represent our experimental contrast values of a graphene flake measured under numerous wavelengths of light (Right).

When compared to expensive atomic force microscopy measurements, the contrast layer number method was not accurate, but the behavior correlated to that of the theoretical gradient plot. Future work involves mitigating the experimental error in our measurement techniques.

Publications

Our team submitted our findings to the American Journal of Physics for publication and is in the second stage of the reviewing process.

Citation: Seredinski, T. Qafko, N. Hillyer, and A. Norman, "Bringing graphene into the undergraduate classroom," (Submitted, 2023)

The image (Left) shows my poster that I presented during a Wentworth Institute of Technology scientific conference.