Manifestations of Laser-Induced Graphene under Ultraviolet Irradiation of Polyimide with Varied Optical Fluence.

In this work, we put forward a rigorous study on ultraviolet (355-nm) laser irradiation of polyimide for the realization of high-quality laser-induced graphene (LIG) with micron-scale features. High-quality material and micron-scale features are desirable-but often at odds-given that small features demand tightly focused beam spots, with a predisposition to ablation. As such, we investigate the synthesis of LIG by correlating the material characteristics, as gleaned from scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, to the incident optical fluence, as a measure of applied optical energy per unit area.