A team of researchers from Korea's Pusan National University, led by Assistant Professor Songkil Kim, have examined the relationship between surface structures on chemical vapor deposition (CVD) grown graphene and its properties, specifically friction.
They correlated surface structures with nanoscale friction of a multi-layered graphene island. By cleaning the graphene surface using mechanical scratching of polymeric surface contamination, the team unveiled the surface structures such as small-scale and large-scale (folded) wrinkles on graphene using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and investigated their effect on nanoscale friction.