Graphene oxide (GO) is a versatile 2D material whose properties can be tuned by changing the type and concentration of oxygen-containing functional groups attached to its surface. However, a detailed knowledge of the dependence of the chemo/physical features of this material on its chemical composition is largely unknown. We combine classical molecular dynamics and density functional theory simulations to predict the structural and electronic properties of GO at low degree of oxidation and suggest a revision of the Lerf-Klinowski model. We find that layer deformation is larger for samples containing high concentrations of epoxy groups and that correspondingly the band gap increases. Targeted chemical modification of the GO surface appears to be an effective route to tailor the electronic properties of the monolayer for given applications. Our simulations also show that the chemical shift of the C-1s XPS peak allows one to unambiguously characterize GO composition, resolving the peak attribution  uncertainty often encountered in experiments.

Nanoporous graphene was proposed as an efficient material for reverse osmosis water desalination membranes because it allows water molecules to pass at high flux while rejecting hydrated salt ions. Nevertheless, from an experimental point of view it is still difficult to control the pore size. A scalable method to generate pores is urgently required for the diffusion of this technology. We propose, by theoretical calculations, an innovative and scalable strategy to better control the dimension of the pores in graphenebased membranes by reduction of single-layer graphene oxide (GO). The latter is first annealed at a controlled mild temperature to induce the aggregation of its randomly distributed oxygen-containing functional groups into small nanometric clusters. The layer then undergoes a high-temperature reducing treatment that causes the desorption of the functional groups along with carbon removal only in the oxidized areas, producing subnanometric pores while leaving unchanged the remaining pristine graphene areas.

The shape/dimension of the oxidized clusters and the process temperature were found to be the main factors affecting pore formation in GO membranes produced with a thermal reduction process.

A novel electro-optical demodulating detector with 3-dimensional electrodes is presented in this paper. Thanks to a large substrate thickness, this device can combine high responsivity and demodulation contrast in the infrared spectral region, as needed in Time-of-Flight optical ranging applications. Proof-of-concept large-area detectors are fabricated on Floating Zone silicon, using Deep Reactive Ion Etching to form throughsilicon columnar electrodes. The device operation principle is validated by experimental and simulation results. TCAD modeling is used to design detectors with scaled geometry suitable for integration in hybrid image sensors.