TY - CONF A1 - Chemello, Giovanni A1 - Radnik, Jörg A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan T1 - Analysis of industrial graphene-based flakes – first results on morphological characterization, sample preparation and chemical composition N2 - Before industrial grade graphene could reach comparable quality to the controlled laboratory scale material, many challenges must be overcome. In order to bridge the gap between lab-scale and industrial-scale production is necessary to develop processes, equipment and measurement procedures to control the material features. One of the most crucial reasons of graphene’s limited commercialization is the lack of standard procedures to properly characterize and define the material chemical and structural properties down to the nanometer level. This leads to many issues regarding material synthesis repeatability, inappropriateness choice of measurands and measurement reproducibility which heavily affect the consistency of the material performance. For example, among all the different industrially produced real-world graphene, it is crucial to determine how many layers of graphene build the material. Products that are built by more than 10 layers should be more correctly referred as nanosized graphite, a problem that is often regarded as the “fake graphene” issue. In our study, a comparative analysis is performed on two different series (G5 and G6) of industrial graphene powders, each series produced with four types of functionalization: raw graphene, oxygen-functionalized, nitrogen-functionalized and fluorine-functionalized. All the 8 sample variants were analyzed from a chemical and morphological point of view in the form of powders prepared as slightly pressed in metallic sample holders. The results of the comparative chemical analyses XPS and EDS show a good agreement in the concentration values for all the elements present in the samples, despite the different analysis volumes addressed by the two techniques. For this reason, the samples can be considered homogeneous in both lateral and vertical direction. A clear influence of the morphology on the composition is evident. Therefore, such correlative measurements of morphology and composition are necessary for a comprehensive characterization of industrial graphene flakes. Protocols for reliable characterization of industrial graphene flakes are in progress. T2 - Microscopy and Microanalysis 2022 CY - Portland, OR, USA DA - 31.07.2022 KW - Graphene powder KW - Functionalized graphene KW - XPS KW - SEM KW - EDS PY - 2022 AN - OPUS4-55479 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Chemello, Giovanni A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan A1 - Radnik, Jörg T1 - Characterization of Graphene using HAXPES N2 - Since its discovery, graphene has got growing attention in the industrial and application research due to its unique properties . However, graphene has not been yet implemented into the industrial market, in particularly due to the difficulty of properly characterizing this challenging material. As most of other nanomaterials, graphene’s properties are closely linked to its chemical and structural properties, such as number of layers, flake thickness, degree of functionalisation and C/O ratio. For the commercialization, suitable procedures for the measurement and characterization of the ultrathin flakes, of lateral dimensions in the range from µm to tens of µm, are essential.Surface chemical methods, especially XPS, have an outstanding role of providing chemical information on the composition. Thereby, one well-known problem for surface analytical methods is the influence of contamination on the composition as in the case of adventitious carbon. The differentiation between carbon originated from the contamination or from the graphene sample itself is often not obvious, which can lead to altered results in the determination of the composition. To overcome this problem, Hard Energy X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (HAXPES) offers new possibilities due to its higher information depth. Therefore, XPS measurement obtained with Al Kα radiation (E = 1486. 6 eV) were compared with analyses performed with a Cr Kα (E = 5414. 8 eV) excitation on functionalized graphene samples. Differences are discussed in terms of potential carbon contamination, but also of oxygen on the composition of the samples. Measurements are performed on O-, N- and F-functionalized graphene. Different preparation procedures (powder, pellet, drop cast from liquid suspension) will be also discussed, correlation of the results with the flakes morphology as well as their validation with other independent methods are in progress. T2 - ECASIA 2022 CY - Limerick, Ireland DA - 29.05.2022 KW - Graphene KW - Functionalized graphene KW - Depth profiling PY - 2022 AN - OPUS4-56814 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Radnik, Jörg A1 - Chemello, Giovanni A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan A1 - Howe, T. A1 - Vyas, N. A1 - Reed, B.P. A1 - Pollard, A.J. A1 - Clifford, C.A. T1 - Reliable chemical characterization of industrial graphene related materials N2 - International standards describing reliable protocols will facilitate the commercialization of graphene and related 2D materials. One physico-chemical key property next to flake size and thickness is the chemical composition of the material. Therefore, an ISO standard is under development with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy having a prominent role. With its information depth of around 10 nm which is the similar length scale as the thickness as of particles of 2D materials consisting of a few monolayer XPS seems to be highly suitable for this purpose. Different sample preparation methods like pressing the powders onto adhesive tapes, into recesses, or into solid pellets result in inconsistencies in the quantification. For the validation of the quantification with XPS an interlaboratory comparison was initiated under the auspice of the “Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards” (VAMAS). First results confirm that the sample preparation method (pellet vs. powder) influences the quantification results clearly. Considering this effect, a good agreement of the results from the different participants were observed. Similar results were observed for raw, N- and F-functionalized graphene. T2 - Graphene CY - Manchester, England, UK DA - 27.06.2023 KW - X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy KW - Functionalized graphene KW - Interlaboratory comparison KW - VAMAS PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-57895 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Radnik, Jörg T1 - How to measure the chemical composition of industrial graphene - New insights from an interlaboratory comparison N2 - International standards describing reliable protocols will facilitate the commercialization of graphene and related 2D materials. One physico-chemical key property next to flake size and thickness is the chemical composition of the material. Therefore, an ISO standard is under development with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy having a prominent role. With its information depth of around 10 nm which is the similar length scale as the thickness as of particles of 2D materials consisting of a few monolayer XPS seems to be highly suitable for this purpose. Different sample preparation methods like pressing the powders onto adhesive tapes, into recesses, or into solid pellets result in inconsistencies in the quantification. For the validation of the quantification with XPS an interlaboratory comparison was initiated under the auspice of the “Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards” (VAMAS). First results confirm that the sample preparation method (pellet vs. powder) influences the quantification results clearly. T2 - Characterization of Nanomaterials Colloquium CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 04.07.2023 KW - X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy KW - Functionalized graphene KW - Interlaboratory comparison PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-57897 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Radnik, Jörg A1 - Chemello, Giovanni A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan A1 - Reed, B. P. A1 - Pollard, A. A1 - Clifford, C. T1 - VAMAS Project A33: Chemical composition of functionalized graphene with X ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) N2 - The results of the interlaboratory comparison about the chemical composition of functionalized graphene are presented. T2 - DIN Meeting NA 062-08-16 AA CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 25.05.2023 KW - X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy KW - Functionalized graphene KW - Interlaboratory comparison KW - VAMAS PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-57650 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Radnik, Jörg A1 - Chemello, Giovanni A1 - Hodoroaba, Vasile-Dan A1 - Howe, T. A1 - Vyas, N. A1 - Reed, B. P. A1 - Pollard, A. J. A1 - Clifford, C. A. T1 - Reliable Chemical Characterization Protocols for Industrial Graphene-Related Materials N2 - Since its isolation, graphene has received growing attention from academia and industry due to its unique properties. Promising opportunities for applications are discussed in different field like electronics and optoelectronics, detection, and sensing devices, biosystems or chemical and environmental corrosion inhibition. Here, functionalization with elements like oxygen, nitrogen or fluorine can broaden the application, for example in composite materials. However, lack of generally accepted operation procedures hinders the commercialization, the so-called “what is my material” barrier. Therefore, first efforts were done to develop common, reliable, and reproducible ways to characterize the morphological and chemical properties of the industrially produced material. In this contribution, our efforts in the development of reliable chemical characterizations protocols for functionalized graphene are presented. An ISO standard for the chemical characterization of graphene-related (GRM) is under development with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) having a prominent role. With its information depth of around 10 nm, which is the similar length scale as the thickness of particles of 2D materials consisting of a few monolayers, XPS seems to be highly suitable for the quantitative analysis of (functionalized) GRM. Thereby, different sample preparation methods like pressing the powders onto adhesive tapes, into recesses, or into solid pellets result in inconsistencies in the quantification. Furthermore, different morphologies like stacks of graphene layers (left figure) or irregular particles (right figure) lead to different analysis results for the chemical composition. For the validation of the quantification with XPS and the further development of standards an international interlaboratory comparison was initiated under the head of the “Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards” (VAMAS). First results are reported showing the suitability of the protocols. Finally, the XPS results are compared with the elemental composition results obtained after quantification with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) as a fast analytical method which is usually combined with electron microscopy. T2 - nanoSAFE 2023 CY - Grenoble, France DA - 05.06.2023 KW - X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy KW - Functionalized graphene KW - Interlaboratory comparison KW - VAMAS PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-57652 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -