Self-assembled
monolayer (SAM)-functionalized substrates are widely
used for tailoring the electronic properties (i.e., p- and n-type doping) of two-dimensional materials,
which might suppress the charge scattering, impurities, and wrinkles
that can severely decline electrical properties. The fluorinated self-assembled
monolayer (FSAM) is also used for promoting electrical properties
by eliminating the small number of water molecules/residues between
the substrate and graphene during the typical wet transfer process.
However, taking graphene as an example, most of the graphene/SAM or
graphene/FSAM studies are focused on the enhancement of their electrical
properties and lack investigation on their surface morphology after
transfer and the correlation between them. Herein, a strategy is discovered
in which FSAM-modified substrates help construct a wrinkle-free graphene
film with the dry transfer process due to the low surface energy between
the graphene and FSAM. Trichloro(1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorooctyl)silane (FDTS)
was selected as a precursor toward the formation of the monolayer
and highly uniform FSAM using a facile dip-coating route, which is
feasible on versatile substrates such as Si, SiO2/Si, and
poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). The surface roughness of the FSAM-modified
SiO2 substrate reduces from 2.98 to 0.13 nm. Therefore,
the lower surface energy (from 60.80 to 8.12 mN/m) was found to enhance
the carrier mobility of the transferred graphene by about 1.77 times,
increasing from 894.6 to 1588 cm2/(V·s). Furthermore,
a top-gated field-effect transistor based on graphene/FSAM was fabricated
and characterized in which the FSAM decouples from the strong substrate
interference and significantly improved the field-effect mobility
by up to 17 times compared to that of graphene without substrate modification.
Thus, this work provides a facile strategy to avoid wrinkle defects
and suppress charge scattering through the decoupling from the substrate,
which could be applied to other two-dimensional (2D) materials for
improving their electrical performance on transistors and flexible
electronics.
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