Event

MSE Seminar Series: Jeremy Robinson

Friday, November 6, 2015
1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Room 2108, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
JoAnne Kagle
301-405-5240
jkagle@umd.edu

Dr. Jeremy Robinson
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)
Washington, D.C. 

Hybridized Graphene Materials

Graphene's high-quality structure and properties continue to motivate research to mold it into an electronic material of the future. Analogous to other electronic materials, however, defects are a tool to engineer graphene's properties and tune its response to various stimuli. In this talk I discuss our efforts at the Naval Research Lab to widely engineer and manipulate defects in hybrid graphene materials for applications ranging from sensing to nanomechanical structures. First, I will present results using chemically modified graphene to not only improve chemical sensing, but also achieve new functionality for electronic systems. In particular, we hybridize graphene via the addition of fluorine atoms and show the subsequent formation of nanoribbons and tunnel barriers exploiting property changes from the fluorine adsorbates. Second, I will present results on the electronic hybridization of stacked graphene layers, where the moiré pattern formed by the relative twist between layers is responsible for new properties of the bilayer system. Defects specific to this system include rotational disorder, strain, and chemical doping. These defects modify, but do not destroy the strong interlayer coupling. Finally, I will present results on the influence of chemistry and defects on the properties of graphene nanomechanical systems. By measuring the response of high-quality nanomechanical resonators, we can extract relevant mechanical properties including tension, yield strength, resilience, and modulus as a function of defect introduction.

About the Speaker

Jeremy Robinson is a Materials Research Scientist and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). He earned his BS degree in Physics from Towson University and MS/PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley. In 2007 he won a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at NRL. There, his work focused on implementing graphene oxide for sensing and quickly expanded to widely studying the chemical, electronic and mechanical properties of graphene. He joined the full-time staff at NRL in 2008 and continues to focus on the science and technology of two-dimensional materials. His work has been recognized by several awards at NRL, including the Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award (2015), as well as the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2012).