Black-wax assisted lift-off and transfer of CVD grown graphene from copper foil substrates to various foreign substrates

Abstract

The authors have lifted-off and transferred graphene nanosheets, which were grown by chemical vapor deposition on copper foil substrates, to flat, nanostructured, and microscale-patterned substrates. Black-wax, instead of the conventional polymethyl methacrylate, was used as the protective layer in the lift-off and transfer process. Quartz wafers, with and without coating of gold nanoparticle thin films, and surface grooved Si wafers were used as the target substrates. Structural, electrical, and optical characterizations revealed that the lift-off and transfer process, protected by the black-wax, is repeatable, even for graphene stacking, and the transferred graphene nanosheets are uniform and free of damage on flat substrates. Their electrical and optical properties are greatly affected by the target substrates; on quartz coated with gold nanoparticle thin film, coupling between graphene and the plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles has been observed. The authors also demonstrated that the transferred graphene nanosheets can apparently tune the spectral polarization properties of surface grooved Si.