Mechanism for etching of exfoliated graphene on substrates by low-energy electron irradiation from helium plasma electron sources.

The authors investigate the mechanism for etching of exfoliated graphene multilayers on SiO₂ by low-energy (50 eV) electron irradiation using He plasma systems for electron sources. A mechanism for this etching has been previously proposed in which the incident electrons traverse the graphene and dissociate oxygen from the SiO₂ substrate at the graphene/SiO₂ interface. The dissociated oxygen reacts with carbon defects formed by the electron irradiation and thereby etches the graphene from below. They study etching using graphene flakes of various thicknesses on SiO₂, low and higher resistivity Si, indium tin oxide (ITO), and silicon carbide (SiC). They find that thicker layer graphene on SiO₂ does not etch less than thinner layers, contrary to the previously proposed model. They find that etching does not occur on low-resistivity Si and ITO. Etching occurs on higher resistivity Si and SiC, although much less than on SiO₂. This is attributed to He ion sputtering and vacancy formation. From these observations, they propose that oxygen etches graphene from above rather than below. In addition, they propose He ions instead of incident electrons cause the defects that oxygen reacts with and etches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]