Wire-Print as a Novel Sample Preparation Approach for Accurate Morphological Characterization of Constituent Particles of Graphene-Related 2D-Materials
- Graphene and graphene-oxide (GO) are used for instance in catalysis, biomedical applications, in inks and as composite materials. To ensure product quality and safe-by-design principles within the various application fields, the commercial material must be characterized and specified through well-known and standardized procedures. The accurate morphological characterization of 2D materials is a challenging task, requiring careful sample preparation on a substrate either as a powder or from liquid suspension. These must be isolated, homogeneously distributed, with good statistics of the counted particles. Various sample preparation approaches have been reported in the literature, e.g. electrospray, substrate surface treatment, embedding the particulate material and polishing the cross-section, or addition of ligands to the suspended nanostructures. In this study, a novel deposition procedure for graphene-related 2D materials (GR2Ms) was systematically tested for its efficacy. TheGraphene and graphene-oxide (GO) are used for instance in catalysis, biomedical applications, in inks and as composite materials. To ensure product quality and safe-by-design principles within the various application fields, the commercial material must be characterized and specified through well-known and standardized procedures. The accurate morphological characterization of 2D materials is a challenging task, requiring careful sample preparation on a substrate either as a powder or from liquid suspension. These must be isolated, homogeneously distributed, with good statistics of the counted particles. Various sample preparation approaches have been reported in the literature, e.g. electrospray, substrate surface treatment, embedding the particulate material and polishing the cross-section, or addition of ligands to the suspended nanostructures. In this study, a novel deposition procedure for graphene-related 2D materials (GR2Ms) was systematically tested for its efficacy. The quantitative analysis of the size and shape distribution of the materials was conducted using electron microscopy and was successfully tested in XPS and EDS experiments. The technique is an extension of the conventional drop-casting method and has been designated "wire-print" deposition.
The result of such a wire-print deposition for a graphene-based suspension is shown in Figure, where various treatment conditions have been tested with a repetition of up to 10 times per condition, all together 86 spots on a silicon wafer of 10 mm².…

