Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Projects: Measurement of Surface Stability of Graphene at ELETTRA

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Doctoral Enhancement Program will provide support for a PhD graduate student in condensed matter/materials physics. The program will fund a series of collaborative scientific experiments with two Italian scientists at the NANOSPECTROSCOPY Beamline of the ELETTRA synchrotron facility in Trieste, Italy. The experiments will involve spectromicroscopy measurements on exfoliated mono- and multilayer graphene, with the goal of understanding the nature of the graphene surface morphology, including its intrinsic thermodynamic stability and extrinsically induced surface corrugation. The experiments will examine the temperature dependence of the surface corrugation as well as its behavior under bias, and changes in other extrinsic variables. From the point of view of education, this Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Program (DDEP) has the specific goal of broadening the scientific research horizons of a PhD student. The proposed experiments at ELETTRA are particularly useful in this regard as they 1) involve a research experience at a state-of-the-art third generation synchrotron with unique beamlines and 2) involve interactions with multiple international scientists and fellow students from Italy and other European countries.