Adhesive tape exfoliation: Why it works for graphene

DTU Nanotech, Department of Micro- and Nanotechnology, Technical University of Denmark Ørsteds Plads, Building 345B, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

^(a) jabo@nanotech.dtu.dk

Received: 17 November 2014
Accepted: 23 February 2015

Abstract

Single-crystal graphite can be cleaved by the use of an adhesive tape. This was also the initial route for obtaining graphene, a one-layer thick graphite slab. In this letter a few simple and fun considerations are presented in an attempt to shed some light on why this procedure is successful. In particular on the nature of the surprisingly small number of repetitive steps that are needed in order to obtain a single-layer slab. Two frameworks for exfoliation are investigated: parallel exfoliation involving repetitive simultaneous cleaving, the other, serial exfoliation, which involves the repetitive cleaving of a single chunk of graphite. For both cases, parallel and serial exfoliation, it is investigated how many generations of cleavages are needed. An approximate model with the probability distribution expressed as a simple closed form is presented and compared with the simulations.