Paper: High-Throughput Optical Thickness and Size Characterization of 2D Materials

We describe a method using simple optical microscopy and image processing that simultaneously characterizes thousands of nanosheets in a sample area on the order of 1 mm². Including data acquisition and processing, both the number of atomic layers and the lateral sizes of all sheets can be obtained within a few hours—approximately 100 times faster than with previous methods, such as atomic force microscopy. We demonstrate the utility of this method by examining fractions made from a sample of graphene oxide (GO) made using an emulsion-based method. Beyond providing the morphological composition of the samples, the reported method is sensitive enough to provide information about the oxidation level of a population of GO sheets and, correspondingly, optical constants of the material.

See our Press Release: Measuring the Thickness of the Thinnest.

Our paper has been published in the journal Nanoscale (2017 impact factor: 7.367).

Along with this paper we also published this content for general access:

• The code we developed implementing a special algorithm we developed for this work: invert-mountain (free and open source software). It compensates images for contrast inversion.
• The complete dataset used for the optical images images in the paper: High Throughput Optical Graphene Assessment.

• More about our 2D materials research
• All Publications of the Schniepp group