We present here a method for cleaning intermediate-size (5~50nm) contamination from highly oriented pyrolytic graphite. Electron beam deposition causes a continuous increase of carbonaceous material on graphene and graphite surfaces, which is difficult to remove by conventional techniques. Direct mechanical wiping using a graphite nanoeraser is observed to drastically reduce the amount of contamination. After the mechanical removal of contamination, the graphite surfaces were able to self-retract after shearing, indicating that van der Waals contact bonding is restored. Since contact bonding provides an indication of a level of cleanliness normally only attainable in a high-quality clean-room, we discuss potential applications in preparation of ultraclean surfaces.
@article{arxiv.1010.4102,
title = {Graphite Nanoeraser},
author = {Ze Liu and Peter. Bøggild and Jia-rui Yang and Yao Cheng and Francois Grey and Yi-lun Liu and Li Wang and Quan-shui Zheng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.4102},
year = {2015}
}