On March 12, KAIST announced that Professor Sang Ouk Kim's research team from the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering was successful in transferring and utilizing block copolymer self-assembled thin films, formed at the surface of chemically modified graphene films, for nano-scale patterning of various flexible and non-planar geometries.

The technology can realize the semiconductor that can store a large quantity of data while bending flexibly. The academia expects that the development of such technology will contribute significantly to the development of high-quality flexible electronic equipment.

In this work, mechanically robust but compliant, chemically modified graphene (CMG) film was introduced as a transferrable and disposable substrate for the self-assembled nano-patterning of non-planar, flexible, and even multi-stack device-oriented structure. Taking advantage of the high chemical and thermal stability, genuine atomic scale flatness, and mechanical robustness with compliance, graphene-based materials can be excellent substrates for nano-patterning. Additionally, CMG is obtainable from natural graphite in a cost effective manner.

Professor Kim said, "The previously introduced flexible semiconductors have faced difficulty in commercialization due to their thermal instability. This technology is an innovative research accomplishment that succeeded in applying the mechanically robust graphene as a substrate."

On March 20, Professor Kim was invited as a lecturer at the American Physics Society about his recent research. He said that he aspires to design a complex circuit, such as a semiconductor circuit, by conducting a research based on source technology.

This work was supported by the Research Center Program of Institute for Basic Science, the Smart IT Convergence System Research Center, and Nano-Material Technology Development Program funded by the Korean government. The research result was published in the renowned journal Advanced Materials on March 6.