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High‐contrast optical microscopy of graphene sheets
Author(s) -
Rashidian Vaziri Mohammad Reza
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
microscopy research and technique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.536
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1097-0029
pISSN - 1059-910X
DOI - 10.1002/jemt.23505
Subject(s) - graphene , refractive index , optical microscope , microscopy , materials science , substrate (aquarium) , optics , layer (electronics) , contrast (vision) , optoelectronics , nanotechnology , composite material , physics , scanning electron microscope , oceanography , geology
In the way of making graphene an industry‐friendly material, it must be mass‐produced with high‐quality and reduced cost over large areas. Assisted by machine‐learning techniques, rapid, nondestructive and accurate determination of large graphene sheets on SiO 2 /Si substrates has been made possible in recent years by the optical microscopy method. Optimization of the substrate to achieve the maximum contrast can further extend the application of the optical microscopy method for quality control of the mass‐produced graphene. Graphene/ n 2 / n 3 three‐layer structures, where n 2 and n 3 are refractive indices, are routinely used for identifying the number of graphene layers by optical reflection microscopy. In this paper, two analytical equations are derived that can be easily used for high‐contrast optical imaging of graphene sheets without any need to resort to the cumbersome numerical methods. One of the equations is derived for choosing the best material with refractive index n 2 that when coated on a substrate with refractive index n 3 , maximizes the optical contrast. The other equation is derived for finding the best thickness of the SiO 2 layer in graphene/SiO 2 /Si structures, which are in common use for fabrication of graphene‐based devices. The results are implemented in a MATLAB GUI, see Supporting Information, to assist the users in using the equations.