Morphological Characterization and Lumped Element Model of Graphene and Biochar Thick Films

Carbon based materials exhibit interesting mechanical, thermal and electrical properties which make them excellent contenders for use as fillers in composites as film. Graphene has been vastly used among the carbon-based materials. More recently eco-friendly carbon-based materials like biochar have emerged. The deployment of carbon-based materials in films needs to be studied since films are more versatile and permit the exploitation of electrical properties of such materials over circuits and systems. Typical circuits and systems exploiting electrical properties of novel materials perform a number of applications including sensing, detection, tunable devices and energy harvesting. In this paper, films composed of 9:1 graphene or biochar are deployed on a microstrip line. The morphological properties of graphene and biochar and their respective films are studied with Raman spectra and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM). The electrical properties (four-point probe measurements and scattering parameter measurements) of the films. Low frequency measurements are used as starting point for circuit models estimating the lumped impedance of the films. From the morphological characterization it is shown that biochar films appear as granulates carbonaceous materials whereas graphene films contains several flakes forming a network. From the low frequency measurements and microwave characterization it is seen that graphene films are more conductive as compared to biochar films. In many applications, it is useful to know the surface impedance of the film since it varies on interaction with any external stimulus (variation of pressure, humidity, gas, etc.).