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. 2017 Jan 9:7:39770.
doi: 10.1038/srep39770.

Real-time oxide evolution of copper protected by graphene and boron nitride barriers

M Galbiati  1 , A C Stoot  1 , D M A Mackenzie  1 , P Bøggild  1 , L Camilli  1
Affiliations

Real-time oxide evolution of copper protected by graphene and boron nitride barriers

M Galbiati et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Applying protective or barrier layers to isolate a target item from the environment is a common approach to prevent or delay its degradation. The impermeability of two-dimensional materials such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has generated a great deal of interest in corrosion and material science. Owing to their different electronic properties (graphene is a semimetal, whereas hBN is a wide-bandgap insulator), their protection behaviour is distinctly different. Here we investigate the performance of graphene and hBN as barrier coatings applied on copper substrates through a real-time study in two different oxidative conditions. Our findings show that the evolution of the copper oxidation is remarkably different for the two coating materials.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Evolution of the Raman signal intensity as bare (black squares), G-coated (blues triangles) and hBN-coated (red asterisks) copper samples are heated up from RT to 400 °C within 45 minutes for (a) CuO at 500 cm−1  (b) Cu2O at 640 cm−1  and (c) Cu(OH)2 at 800 cm−1 . The grey area indicates when graphene is etched away upon reaction with ambient oxygen, thus leaving the copper surface uncoated (see Fig. S8 for more details). The vertical lines indicate where the temperature is ramped up, while being kept constant in between.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Raman data collected in the isothermal experiment at 50 °C showing the time dependent evolution of the peaks for (a) CuO at 500 cm−1  (b) Cu2O at 640 cm−1  and (c) Cu(OH)2 at 800 cm−1 .
Figure 3
Figure 3. Cu2p3/2 core level (left side) and Cu LMM lines (right side) before and after the oxidation experiments for bare, G-coated and hBN-coated Cu samples.
In the Cu2p3/2 spectra the energy positions for Cu + Cu2O, CuO, and Cu(OH)2 components are 932.7 eV, 934 eV and 935.1 eV, respectively. In the Cu LMM panel the vertical lines point out the binding energy positions for metallic Cu (568.3 eV), CuO (568.9 eV), Cu2O (570.1 eV) and Cu(OH)2 (570.5 eV). The top horizontal axis in the Cu LMM panels reports the corresponding kinetic energy.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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