With the discovery of graphene in 2004, a new field of study opened up. This field of study is based on ”atomically thin materials”. These materials are only one to a few atoms thick. When...Show moreWith the discovery of graphene in 2004, a new field of study opened up. This field of study is based on ”atomically thin materials”. These materials are only one to a few atoms thick. When materials are this thin, they are considered 2D materials. The materials are interesting because of possible future applications. Some of these materials are extremely sensitive to air. This sensitivity makes it very difficult, to impossible to research the intrinsic properties of these materials as well as to use the materials in large-scale applications. The Bhattacharyya group is working on these atomically thin materials to explore phenomena such as the quantum spin Hall effect and the quantum anomalous Hall effect. Observing these phenomena requires creating a hybrid of novel 2D materials and contacting these stacks with metal in the deposition process in an ultrahigh vacuum chamber. The environmental degradation of the samples while they are being transported is one of the present bottlenecks in this research. The samples are exposed to ambient air while being transported from the glove box’s inert environment to the Raman spectroscope and finally to the UHVatmosphere of the vacuum deposition chamber. This research will focus on designing and creating novel instrumentation solutions to facilitate the protection of these 2D materials (Fe3GeTe3, CrGeTe3 and NbSe2) under transport and measurement. The effectiveness of the instrument will be tested in multiple different methods. These methods include the optical micro-graph, Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. After the container was designed and built, a leak tester was used to establish a leak rate of 10-7 mbarl/s. Then, graphene was used successfully to test the effects of the optical glass on reproducing the Raman spectrum of graphene. Then, Raman spectroscopy was performed on thin flakes of CrGeTe3 to test the degradation due to air exposure outside the container compared to the inert environment inside the container. Finally, an atomic force microscopy was performed to determine the thickness of these thin flakes of CrGeTe3.Show less
