One-step metal electroplating and patterning on a plastic substrate using an electrically-conductive layer of few-layer graphene

Few-layer graphene (FLG) was investigated as an electrically-conductive interleaf layer for one-step electroplating and patterning of metal on nonconductive polymer substrates without using multiple and toxic pretreatment processes in traditional electroplating. An individual FLG (5–10 nm of thickne...

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Veröffentlicht in:Carbon (New York) 2012-02, Vol.50 (2), p.612-621
Hauptverfasser: Hwang, Taeseon, Oh, Joon Suk, Hong, Jung-Pyo, Nam, Gi-Yong, Bae, Ah-Hyun, Son, Sang-Ik, Lee, Geun-Ho, Sung, Hak-Kyung, Lee, Youngkwan, Nam, Jae-Do
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Few-layer graphene (FLG) was investigated as an electrically-conductive interleaf layer for one-step electroplating and patterning of metal on nonconductive polymer substrates without using multiple and toxic pretreatment processes in traditional electroplating. An individual FLG (5–10 nm of thickness with 6.4% of oxygen content) was obtained by expanding graphite with microwave followed by exfoliating the expanded graphite with sonication in N-methyl-pyrrolidone. Stacking FLG in the in-plane direction, a robust FLG film was obtained by the vacuum-assisted filtering and drying methods, and transferred to a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate via an intermediate transfer to the water surface. The sheet resistance of the FLG film on the PET substrate was 0.9 kΩ/sq with a thickness of 80 nm and the root-mean-square roughness of 29 nm. In the electroplating of nickel on the FLG film, hemisphere-shape metal seeds appeared in the early stage of electroplating and they subsequently grew up to 200–480 nm, which became connected to form a continuous nickel layer. The thickness of the continuous nickel layer increased linearly with electroplating time. The developed electroplating method demonstrated its capability of selective patterning on nonconductive substrates using a simple masking technique.
ISSN:0008-6223
1873-3891
DOI:10.1016/j.carbon.2011.09.020