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arXiv · 2311.01321

Method of Mechanical Exfoliation of Bismuth with Micro-Trench Structures

Oulin Yu·Raphaela Allgayer·Simon Godin·Jacob Lalande·Paolo Fossati·Chunwei Hsu·Thomas Szkopek·Guillaume Gervais
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Abstract

The discovery of graphene led to a burst in search for 2D materials originating from layered atomic crystals coupled by van der Waals force. While bulk bismuth crystals share this layered crystal structure, unlike other group V members of the periodic table, its interlayer bonds are stronger such that traditional mechanical cleavage and exfoliation techniques have shown to be inefficient. In this work, we present a novel mechanical cleavage method for exfoliating bismuth by utilizing the stress concentration effect induced by micro-trench SiO2 structures. As a result, the exfoliated bismuth flakes can achieve thicknesses down to the sub-10 nm range which are analyzed by AFM and Raman spectroscopy.

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Oulin Yu, Raphaela Allgayer, Simon Godin, Jacob Lalande, Paolo Fossati, Chunwei Hsu, Thomas Szkopek, Guillaume Gervais. 2023-11-02. Method of Mechanical Exfoliation of Bismuth with Micro-Trench Structures. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0185886

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