Lateral Size of Graphene Characterized by Atomic Force Microscope

Abstract

Graphene is a two-dimensional (2D) material possesses unique electronic, magnetic, optical, and mechanical properties that promise to many applications. It has been mass produced and successfully used as composites materials in the form of powder and dispersion. The lateral size and its distribution of graphene sheets are very important to the performance of composites materials. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical microscope are normally used to explore the morphology and topological structure of graphene, and further to calculate the lateral size using image processing methods based on the pixels and chromatic aberrations. In this work, lateral size of graphene sheet was calculated based on the topographic height imaging, which is much accurate and convenient and can be used to other 2D materials.