Efficient and thermally stable iodine doping of printed graphene nano-platelets

We report on an efficient and highly thermally stable doping with iodine on ink-jet printed graphene films. The films consist of pristine few-layer graphene nano-platelates (p-GNPs) that are randomly stacked. With iodine doping simply by soaking in aqueous iodine solution, the printed p-GNPs films are enhanced in electrical conductivity by up to around 2 times. The doping effect exhibits excellent thermal stability up to 500 °C under high vacuum condition (10 −6 mBar) evidenced by electrical and spectroscopic means. Furthermore, the doping of iodine leads to a slight increment of work function by 0.07 eV. Using depth profile measurements, it is found that iodine species diffuse deeply into the films and likely intercalate between two adjacent p-GNPs which interpret the aforementioned efficient enhancement and thermal stability of the doping effect. The reported doping scheme offers a viable low-temperature optimization method for conductive electrodes with p-GNPs in the application of printed devices.