Research into carbon nanomaterials continues to excite from both fundamental and technological perspectives, with strong optimism for future applications. The outstanding intrinsic properties of these materials must be matched by our ability to control their structure with ever greater precision; in the limiting case down to the positions of single atoms. In systems which only comprise of a few hundred atoms, a small number of imperfections and defects can have a critical effect on device performance. As the requirements on device structure become more stringent, our current toolbox of patterning techniques adapted from silicon microfabrication will require augmenting with novel nanopatterning techniques.

In this presentation we will look at one particular candidate for atomic scale patterning of graphene, the catalytic channelling of suspended graphene monolayers by silver nanoparticles . The unique opportunities and challenges of this system will be discussed, arriving at some fundamental limits on the resolution of patterning and parallel fabrication of nanopatterning techniques in general.

Tim Booth obtained his M.Phys in Physics at Manchester University, UK and the University of California at Berkeley, USA in 2004. He submitted his Ph.D. in Mesoscopic Physics and Nanotechnology from Manchester University in 2008, entitled "Fabrication, Identification and Characterisation of Two-dimensional Crystals", dealing specifically with graphene, under the supervision of Prof. Andre Geim, co-recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of graphene. He was a co-founder of Graphene Industries Ltd., a UK based graphene supply company. He is now a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Technical University of Denmark in the Department of Micro- and Nanotechnology in the Nanointegration Group. His current research interests include in-situ transmission electron microscopy experiments on graphene, graphene fabrication techniques and the development of graphene-based technologies for future applications.