DMR-0820404: Ruitao Lv, Qing Li, A. R. Botello-Mendez, T. Hayashi, B. Wang, A. Berkdemir, Q. Hao, A. L. Elias, R. Cruz-Silva, H. R. Gutierrez, Y. A. Kim, H. Muramatsu, Jun Zhu, M. Endo, H. Terrones, J.-C. Charlier, M. Pan and M. Terrones. Nitrogen-doped graphene: beyond single substitution and enhanced molecular sensing. Scientific Reports, 2, 586 (2012)
Graphene is a one-atom-thick planar sheet of carbon atoms. By incorporating nitrogen atoms into graphene, its physico-chemical properties could be altered depending on the doping configuration within the sub-lattices. MRSEC researchers developed a process to synthesize nitrogendoped graphene sheets with specific doping structures and used them as high-efficiency surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrate materials for the first time. The interesting structure of asobtained nitrogen-doped graphene sheets was atomically characterized and identified by experimental and theoretical work. When a nitrogen-doped graphene sheet is used as a substrate, the intensities of all the Raman peaks associated to Rhodamine B are remarkably improved and clearly resolved. These findings are important for highly selective and sensitive molecular sensing applications.
