Large area fabrication of self-standing nanoporous graphene-on-PMMA substrate

We report a new fabrication strategy to obtain large area continuous NPGs-on-substrate combining graphene-on-substrate industrial techniques and swift-ion beam irradiation (SHI). Graphene membranes were synthesized on the Cu substrate and afterwards a 600 nm layer of PMMA was spin-coated on the surface to complete the PMMA-Graphene-Cu stack. The PMMA-graphene-Cu trilayer was exposed to a flow of Au heavy ions that penetrate through the entire thickness of both polymer layer and the graphene sheet creating ion-tracks and damages. A consecutive track-etching technique is used with an adequate revealing agent for PMMA, IsoPropyl Alcohol (IPA), to selectively dissolve the latent tracks and damages created during SHI irradiation in the insulating material and the graphene sheet. Resulting from SHI irradiation and track-etching, the graphene nanopores are thus perfectly aligned to the PMMA nanopores, providing, after cupper dissolution, a composite that features both well-defined and truly 2-dimensional nanopores in the graphene layer but that can be handled as a normal polymer film.