Overseas travel to perform in-situ STM experiments at Aarhus University

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Nitrogen doped graphene (N-graphene) is a sheet of graphene with some of the carbon atoms swapped with nitrogen. This material has shown great promise for a number of technological applications - most notably as an electrocatalyst (something that makes an electrochemical reaction more efficient, for example increasing the performance of a battery). However, the "doping" process (how the nitrogen atoms integrate into the carbon lattice and where exactly they go) is not well understood. Gaining a fundamental understanding of how this process works and how to control it would allow researchers and ultimately industry to "tailor" their nitrogen doped graphene for optimal performance. This is a big challenge as it involves understanding how the material evolves on the atomic scale.This proposal seeks to build a new collaboration with a world-leading research group at Aarhus University, Denmark. They are specialists in an advanced microscopy technique called Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy. This allows a sample to be seen in atomic resolution, so we can see exactly where the nitrogen atoms are in the graphene. This is highly complementary with the PI's own X-Ray spectroscopy research, which provides information on the chemical nature of the nitrogen dopants. The combination of the two will allow for a full, atomic-scale picture of how nitrogen incorporates into the graphene and give us clues on how to control this process. This grant will allow the PI to travel to Aarhus University several times over the course of a year to conduct experiments in their lab and correlate the results with experiments done in his home lab.