Graphene may be tough, but those who handle it had better be
tender. The environment surrounding the atom-thick carbon material can
influence its electronic performance, according to researchers at Rice and
Osaka universities who have come up with a simple way to spot contaminants.
Because it’s so easy to accidently introduce impurities into
graphene, labs led by physicists Junichiro Kono of Rice and Masayoshi Tonouchi
of Osaka’s Institute of Laser Engineering discovered a way to detect and
identify out-of-place molecules on its surface through terahertz spectroscopy.