Evolution of graphene growth on Ni and Cu by carbon isotope labeling.

By Xuesong Li, Weiwei Cai, Luigi Pietro Maria Colombo, Rodney S. Ruoff. Nano letters (Print), 2009

1,532 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Large-area graphene growth is required for the development and production of electronic devices. Recently, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of hydrocarbons has shown some promise in growing large-area graphene or few-layer graphene films on metal substrates such as Ni and Cu. It has been proposed that CVD growth of graphene on Ni occurs by a C segregation or precipitation process whereas graphene on Cu grows by a surface adsorption process. Here we used carbon isotope labeling in conjunction with Raman spectroscopic mapping to track carbon during the growth process. The data clearly show that at high temperatures sequentially introduced isotopic carbon diffuses into the Ni first, mixes, and then segregates and precipitates at the surface of Ni forming graphene and/or graphite with a uniform mixture of (12)C and (13)C as determined by the peak position of the Raman G-band peak. On the other hand, graphene growth on Cu is clearly by surface adsorption where the spatial distribution of (12)C and (13)C follows the precursor time sequence and the linear growth rate ranges from about 1 to as high as 6 mum/min depending upon Cu grain orientation. This data is critical in guiding the graphene growth process as we try to achieve the highest quality graphene for electronic devices.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f73de1564ec80dd8b4677582feec79effe3621f5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Materials Chemistry

Citations in the corpus

A simple method to synthesize continuous large area nitrogen-doped graphene (2012, background): “[30] Li XS, Cai WW, Colombo LG, Ruoff RS.”
Measurements of the adhesion energy of graphene to metallic substrates (2013, background): “On the other hand, Cu acts as catalyst in order to deposit graphene on its surface (although Cu has very low carbon solubility than Ni) by the surface adsorption mechanism not by the segregation or precipitation as is the case with Ni [27,31].”
Monolayer graphene as a saturable absorber in a mode-locked laser (2010, methodology): “The monolayer graphene was synthesized by the CVD approach on Cu substrate [15], in which uniform, high quality mono‐layer graphene was obtained through the catalytic decomposition of CH4 on the Cu surface [17].”
Progress, challenges, and opportunities in two-dimensional materials beyond graphene. (2013, methodology): “Vibrational spectroscopy, in general, and Raman spectroscopy, in particular, could be used to detect isotopic-enriched 2Dmaterials to study the growth mechanism as demonstrated and thus be used to study the growth mechanism.(89)”
Growth of Epitaxial Graphene: Theory and Experiment (2014, background): “10(b-d)) a rich area for understanding growth, for instance the competition between surface and volume processes [118].”