Pressure-mediated doping in graphene

Exfoliated graphene and few layer graphene samples supported on SiO(2) have been studied by Raman spectroscopy at high pressure. For samples immersed on a alcohol mixture, an electron transfer of ?n/?P ～ 8 × 10(12) cm(-2) GPa(-1) is observed for monolayer and bilayer graphene, leading to giant doping values of n ～ 6 × 10(13) cm(-2) at the maximum pressure of 7 GPa. Three independent and consistent proofs of the doping process are obtained from (i) the evolution of the Raman G-band to 2D-band intensity ratio, (ii) the pressure coefficient of the G-band frequency, and (iii) the 2D band components splitting in the case of the bilayer sample. The charge transfer phenomena is absent for trilayer samples and for samples immersed in argon or nitrogen. We also show that a phase transition from a 2D biaxial strain response, resulting from the substrate drag upon volume reduction, to a 3D hydrostatic compression takes place when going from the bilayer to the trilayer sample. By model calculations we relate this transition to the unbinding of the graphene-SiO(2) system when increasing the number of graphene layers and as function of the surface roughness parameters. We propose that the formation of silanol groups on the SiO(2) substrate allows for a capacitance-induced substrate-mediated charge transfer.