Abstract
In this paper, carbon thin films were grown using the plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD). Methane (CH4) was used as the carbon precursor to grow the carbon thin film. The grown film was analyzed by the high-resolution transmission electron micrograph (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, and Raman spectrum analysis. The analyses show that the PE-ALD-grown carbon film has an amorphous structure. It was found that the existence of defective sites (nanoscale holes or cracks) on the substrate of copper foil could facilitate the formation of nanolayered carbon films. The mechanism for the formation of nanolayered carbon film in the nanoscale holes was discussed. This finding could be used for the controlled growth of nanolayered carbon films or other two-dimensional nanomaterials while combining with modern nanopatterning techniques.
Highlights
We report the growth of carbon thin films using the plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) and the finding that the existence of defective sites on the substrate of copper foil could facilitate the formation of nanolayered carbon films
This finding could be used for the controlled growth of nanolayered carbon films or other two-dimensional nanomaterials while combining with modern nanopatterning techniques
After the further cross-sectional analysis of the grown carbon thin-film sample by high-resolution transmission electron micrograph (TEM), it was found that the film grown in the nanoscale holes had the structure of nanolayered graphene, while the film grown on the hole-free flat smooth surface was an amorphous carbon film without any nanolayered structure
Summary
Since the discovery of mechanically exfoliated graphene in 2004 [1], research on twodimensional (2D) nanomaterials has grown exponentially due to their compelling physical, chemical, and electrical properties such as high current-carrying capacity, high mobility, and ballistic quantum transport [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. We report the growth of carbon thin films using the plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) and the finding that the existence of defective sites (nanoscale holes or cracks) on the substrate of copper foil could facilitate the formation of nanolayered carbon films. This finding could be used for the controlled growth of nanolayered carbon films or other two-dimensional nanomaterials while combining with modern nanopatterning techniques. A scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam (SEM/FIB) dual-beam system (Helios 600 from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) was used to image and analyze the surface of the grown carbon films. F200X from Thermo Fisher Scientific) equipped with a four-quadrant 0.9 sr X-ray detector
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