Basic Science

Anisotropic Etching Effect in Graphene Basal Plane

Recently, Prof. Zhang Guangyu’s group of the Institute of Physics, CAS, in collaboration with Prof. Gao Hongjun’s group and Prof. Wang Enge’s group, reported for the first time their work on success of realizing the controllable anisotropic etching of graphene by using a home-made remote inductively coupled plasma system. Relevant results were published in Advanced Materials 22, 4014-4019, (2010), which was highly evaluated by the reviewers. The etching in graphene basal plane depends strongly on their crystallographic orientation, resulting in zigzag edges formation. They are able to control the etching from edges by tuning the etching parameters such as plasma intensity, temperature and time duration. This dry anisotropic etching approach is ideally suitable for graphene tailoring as the etching rates can be precisely controlled and the quality of graphene can be preserved. This simple, clean, controllable and scalable technique is also compatible with existing semiconductor processing technology. Combined with electron beam lithographic techniques, this anisotropic etching technique was used for cutting graphene along specific crystallographic orientation with atomic resolution, which is never achieved by previous standard fabrication technologies. Thus a road can be paved for fabrication of future scaled-up graphene nanodevices, based on suitable starting materials and the advances of this anisotropic etching technique.

Breakthrough in Research on Polypropylene Catalyst

Researchers of the synthetic rubber research team, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, CAS blazed a trail in the research of polypropylene and electron donor and developed a new type of polypropylene catalyst made by electron donor, which demonstrates unique advantages in the development of new polypropylene homopolymer and copolymer products. The polypropylene homopolymer developed by this catalyst has wide molecular weight distribution, high impact strength, high yield strength, high tensile stretch, bending modulus and other excellent properties. The polypropylene copolymer developed by this catalyst demonstrates excellent rigid-tough balance. This technique will greatly improve the core competitiveness and promote the development of domestic polypropylene industry. Recently, this new-type polypropylene catalyst was granted both U.S. and Chinese patents.