Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
opportunitiesforthedevelopmentsoflow-dimensionalphysics,and
(ii) the existence of massless Dirac Fermions in graphene, whose
behavior is governed by Dirac's (relativistic) equation, led to the
emergence of a new paradigm of “relativistic” condensed-matter
physics[15].In2004,forthefirsttimegraphenewasexperimentally
observed [16, 17] by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at
the University of Manchester; they were awarded the Nobel Prize
in Physics 2010 for their groundbreaking experiments regarding
graphene. Since then an explosion of interest has been devoted
to graphene. This unique material has been revealed to exhibit
excellent electronic, thermal, magnetic, optical, and mechanical
properties [15, 18]. In this chapter, we will briefly show experi-
mentalprogressesongraphene,focusingonthethermalconduction
related issues, including material growth, thermal measurement
techniques, and main experimental results. Theoretical studies on
thermal conduction of graphene will be discussed in the next
chapter.
The first successful experimental production of graphene was
achieved in 2004 by micro-mechanical alleviation of graphite
[16], which is often referred as scotch tape or drawing method.
The technique provides high mobility graphene with low defect
concentration and thus was widely used in early-stage graphene
experiments. However, the size of produced graphene is too
small and the price is too high. Numerous approaches have
been developed for massive production of high-quality graphene.
Macroscopic-scale graphene sheets can be prepared by chemical
approaches, such as from the exfoliation-reintercalation-expansion
of graphite [19] or from the reduced graphene oxide [20]. The
chemical derived graphene, if with improved quality, will find
wide applications in future electronics. Other popular techniques
include chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of hydrocarbons on
metals (e.g., copper foils [21] and thin nickel layers [22]) and
expitaxy/thermal decomposition of silicon carbide [23]. These
progresses on growth techniques prompt the development of
graphene-based applications.
Nanoscale thermal measurement is very challenging in exper-
iments, since reliable experiments require high-accuracy control
of material growth and manipulation as well as high-resolution
