Paper NS+AS+SS-TuA7
Poly-Aromatic Hydrocarbon Nanostructure Growth on Single and Multi-Layer Graphene

Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 4:20 pm, Room 304

Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are known as potential hazardous organic pollutants, which can be found in soil, air, meat, fish and etc. Carbon based materials are routinely used for environmental remediation. Graphene has ultrahigh surface area and can be seen therefore as an “ultimate carbon filter”. In our communication we report PAH nanostructure nucleation and growth on a single and multi-layer graphene CVD grown on a copper substrate. The PAH deposition was performed by thermal evaporation in vacuum, and resultant morphology of a PAH was studied by means of SEM as a function of time, rate, substrate temperature and graphene thickness. We found that PAH predominantly grows in a form of nanowires which have a good vertical alignment with respect to a graphene plane. It was shown that temperature of a substrate, deposition rate of PAH, and number of graphene layers were the key parameters to control the PAH morphology such as a nucleation density and diameter of PAH nanowires. We relate the orthogonal growth of PAH nanowires to the discotic nature of PAH molecules forming weak VDW interactions with a graphene basal plane and lamella like structures due to favorable face-to-face intermolecular interaction. We envision PAH nanostructures grown on a graphene substrates may help optimize PAH filters.