Residue reduction and intersurface interaction on single graphene sheets

Large regions of pristine graphene are essential to applications which rely on the ideal graphene properties. Common methods for transferring chemical vapour deposition grown graphene to suitable substrates leaves metal oxide particles and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) residues on opposing surfaces, which degrade the properties. A common method to reduce the residues include annealing in vacuum or in argon, however, residues remain on the graphene sheet. The present investigation reports on the metal oxide particle ripening and PMMA decomposition on a single graphene sheet during in-situ annealing up to 1300 °C in a transmission electron microscope. It is shown that the PMMA residues are increasingly reduced at elevated temperatures although the reduction is strongly correlated to the metal oxide particle coverage on the opposing graphene surface. This is shown to occur as a consequence of an electrostatic interaction between the residues and that this prevents the establishment of large clean areas.