Graphene on hydrogen terminated monolayer nanodiamond heterostructures provides a new way to improve carrier transport characteristics of the graphene, offering up to 60% improvement when compared with similar graphene on SiO2/Si substrates. These heterostructures offers excellent current-carrying abilities whilst offering the prospect of a fast, low cost and easy methodology for device applications. The use of ND monolayers is also a compatible technology for the support of large area graphene films. The nature of the C-H bonds between graphene and H-terminated NDs strongly influences the electronic character of the heterostructure, creating effective charge redistribution within the system. Field effect transistors (FETs) have been fabricated based on this novel herterostructure to demonstrate device characteristics and the potential of this approach.
Diamond offers attractive properties as a material for microelectromechanical chemical sensors but is difficult to process in comparison with silicon. Here a method for attaching detonation-derived nanodiamonds to prefabricated and mounted Si cantilever devices is described. It is shown that this hybrid device has a resonant frequency shifted down, compared to Si alone, by around 10% due to a higher spring constant. Exposure to 2,4-dinitrotoluene leads to an easily observed decrease in resonant frequency. The mechanisms behind these observations are discussed and the promise for this form of hybrid cantilever structure for chemical sensors applications highlighted.
The electrical properties of monodispersed detonation nanodiamonds (DNDs) have been studied; a resistivity of the order of 1012 Ω/sq has been determined, with only one significant conduction pathway being observed. The dielectric character of the DND particles is also good, with dielectric loss tangent values in the range 0.05–0.5 being recorded. These combined observations suggest DNDs behave in electrical terms similar to thin film diamond, and that electrical applications for DNDs are worthy of pursuit. Since a simple room temperature sonication process has been used for their deposition, coating a wide-range of three-dimensional substrate materials will be possible. A limitation on the electrical use the monodispersed DNDs, at least in the untreated, as-deposited from solution form used here, is the catastrophic loss of diamond-like character at temperatures above 400 °C.
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