Tailorable Electronic and Electric Properties of Graphene with Selective Decoration of Silver Nanoparticles by Laser-Assisted Photoreduction

While graphene shows great potential for diverse device applications, to broaden the scope of graphene-based device applications further, it would be necessary to tune the electronic state of graphene and its resultant electrical properties properly. Surface decoration with metal nanoparticles is one of the efficient doping methods to control the properties of two-dimensional materials. Here, we report the p-type doping effects in single-layer graphene decorated with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) that were formed area-selectively by the facile one-step photoreduction (PR) process based on focused-laser irradiation. During the PR process, AgNPs were reduced on graphene in AgNO3 solution by laser-driven photoexcitation followed by chemical reactions. Based on scanning electron microscopy analyses, the morphology characteristics of AgNPs were shown to be modulated by the laser dwell time and power controllably. Further, p-type doping effects were demonstrated using graphene-field-effect transistor structures whose graphene channels were selectively decorated with AgNPs by the PR process, as validated by the decrease in channel resistance and the shift of the Dirac point voltage. Moreover, the growth of AgNPs was observed to be more active on the graphene channel that was laser-annealed ahead of the PR process, leading to enhancing the efficiency of this approach for altering device characteristics.