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

氮掺杂石墨烯(N-石墨烯)是一种石墨烯，其中一些碳原子与氮交换。这种材料在许多技术应用中表现出了巨大的前景--最明显的是作为电催化剂(可以使电化学反应更有效，例如提高电池的性能)。然而，“掺杂”过程(氮原子如何融入碳晶格，以及它们的确切去向)还没有被很好地理解。对这一过程的工作原理以及如何控制有一个基本的了解，这将使研究人员和最终的行业能够为他们的氮掺杂石墨烯“量身定做”最佳性能。这是一个巨大的挑战，因为它涉及到了解材料如何在原子尺度上演化。这项提议寻求与丹麦奥胡斯大学的一个世界领先的研究小组建立新的合作。他们是一种名为扫描隧道显微镜的先进显微技术方面的专家。这使得样品可以在原子分辨率下看到，所以我们可以准确地看到氮原子在石墨烯中的位置。这与PI自己的X射线光谱研究是高度互补的，后者提供了关于氮掺杂剂的化学性质的信息。这两者的结合将使我们能够全面、原子地了解氮是如何融入石墨烯的，并为我们提供如何控制这一过程的线索。这笔赠款将允许PI在一年的时间里多次前往奥胡斯大学，在他们的实验室进行实验，并将结果与他的家庭实验室所做的实验相关联。

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.