Abstract
Graphene is a “wonder material” and rapidly rising star in all fields of physics. This strictly twodimensional material exhibits exceptionally high crystal quality and band structure. Graphene, building block of all graphitic materials, has emerged as an interesting material of the 21st century. This two-dimensional, single-layer sheet of sp2 hybridized carbon atoms has attracted tremendous attention and research interest, owing to its exceptional physical properties, such as high mobility, good thermal stability, excellent mechanical strength and high transparency. These properties make graphene a material of interest for many applications, for example in the fields of electronics, optoelectronics, photonics, composites as well as sensors. There are a number of methods for fabricating and characterizing graphene. Here in this work, graphene has been synthesized via micromechanical cleavage method and characterized via various techniques. Graphene is fabricated on oxidized silicon (Si/SiO2 ) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) substrates. Si/SiO2 is a rigid substrate while PMMA is transparent, flexible and a versatile polymeric material having applications in flexible electronics. Micromechanical cleavage method is reproducible and large numbers of high quality graphene flakes were obtained by using this method on these two substrates. The graphene layers thus produced have been identified and characterized using optical microscopy, AFM and Raman spectroscopy showing single layer, bilayer, tri-layer and multi-layer graphene
