Water Trapping at the Graphene/Al2O3 Interface

Abstract

We investigated the effects of trapped water at the graphene/Al2O3 interface using density functional theory. We found that molecularly trapped water does not induce serious interbanding at the Dirac point. However, dissociatively trapped water induces serious interbanding at the Dirac point because of the band alignment induced by the local field of the hydroxyl groups. These findings indicate that trapped water at the graphene/Al2O3 interface can have a significant effect on the electronic structure of graphene.