Nanoscopic infrared characterisation of graphene oxide

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) is a single layer of carbon atoms decorated with oxygen groups, which has recently gained interest as a reinforcing filler in composite materials, in filtration processes and for biomedical applications. However, the structure of GO has not been fully characterised, mainly due to the lack of spectroscopic techniques for the unambiguous identification of the oxygen groups onto the surface of GO at the nanoscale. Only recently it has been demonstrated that by using a contact mode Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) coupled with an IR tuneable source (AFM-IR) it is possible to characterise monolayer GO flakes with a spatial resolution below the diffraction limit. This work investigates the thickness dependence of AFM-IR analysis with respect to GO spectroscopy and provides a comparison with the conventional FTIR of GO materials. This thesis highlights the great discrepancies within the two IR techniques especially on thinner samples (

Date of Award	1 Aug 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Coskun Kocabas (Supervisor) & Matthieu Gresil (Supervisor)