Selective Electroless Silver Deposition on Graphene Edges

We demonstrate a method of electroless selective silver deposition on graphene edges or between graphene islands without covering the surface of graphene. Modifications of the deposition recipe allow for decoration of graphene edges with silver nanoparticles or filling holes in damaged graphene on silica substrate and thus potentially restoring electric connectivity with minimal influence on the overall graphene electrical and optical properties. The presented technique could find applications in graphene based transparent conductors as well as selective edge functionalization and can be extended to other metals than silver. (C) The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved.