Polymer Nanobandage for Patterned Healing and Doping of Graphene Defects

Graphene is a promising 2-dimensional (2D) material due to its high electrical conductivity and mechanical strength, but its uses in modern electronic devices, however, are limited due to defects that arise during preparation and post-synthesis processing. Current approaches for healing and doping graphene include thermal annealing and ion implantation, which are time- and energy-consuming and can cause additional damage to the lattice, respectively. As a fast and efficient solution, the "nanobandage" technique employs rapid thermal annealing (RTA), where a polymer coating placed on graphene is quickly degraded and removed to drive heteroatom dopants into the graphene. To attain the spatial control over doping necessary for constructing device circuit junctions, we utilize the nanobandage method after random copolymer photolithography to achieve patterned doping of graphene. Here, we use polymers to pattern dope and heal defective monolayer graphene with nitrogen and boron. With both n-type and p-type doping, the patterned graphene is examined in field effect devices. This work is significant in providing insight into how photocrosslinking impacts polymer thermal degradation as well as working towards improved efficiency and scalability of nanoelectronics that can potentially be used in applications, including flexible sensors, energy storage, and integrated circuit devices.