Identification of Semiconductive Patches in Thermally Processed Monolayer Oxo‐Functionalized Graphene

Abstract

Abstract The thermal decomposition of graphene oxide (GO) is a complex process at the atomic level and not fully understood. Here, a subclass of GO, oxo‐functionalized graphene (oxo‐G), was used to study its thermal disproportionation. We present the impact of annealing on the electronic properties of a monolayer oxo‐G flake and correlated the chemical composition and topography corrugation by two‐probe transport measurements, XPS, TEM, FTIR and STM. Surprisingly, we found that oxo‐G, processed at 300 °C, displays C−C sp 3 ‐patches and possibly C−O−C bonds, next to graphene domains and holes. It is striking that those C−O−C/C−C sp 3 ‐separated sp 2 ‐patches a few nanometers in diameter possess semiconducting properties with a band gap of about 0.4 eV. We propose that sp 3 ‐patches confine conjugated sp 2 ‐C atoms, which leads to the local semiconductor properties. Accordingly, graphene with sp 3 ‐C in double layer areas is a potential class of semiconductors and a potential target for future chemical modifications.