Copper-Assisted Direct Growth of Vertical Graphene Nanosheets on Glass Substrates by Low-Temperature Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition Process.

Yifei Ma,Changhyun Pang,Heeyeop Chae,Sun Jung Kim,Haegyu Jang

doi:10.1186/s11671-015-1019-8

Abstract

Vertical graphene (VG) nanosheets are directly grown below 500 °C on glass substrates by a one-step copper-assisted plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) process. A piece of copper foil is located around a glass substrate as a catalyst in the process. The effect of the copper catalyst on the vertical graphene is evaluated in terms of film morphology, growth rate, carbon density in the plasma and film resistance. The growth rate of the vertical graphene is enhanced by a factor of 5.6 with the copper catalyst with denser vertical graphene. The analysis of optical emission spectra suggests that the carbon radical density is increased with the copper catalyst. Highly conductive VG films having 800 Ω/□ are grown on glass substrates with Cu catalyst at a relatively low temperature.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-015-1019-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Various carbon nanostructures have received enormous attention recently due to their excellent physical properties
The catalytic effect of copper on graphene growth has been reported in high-temperature CVD processes [27, 28], whereas it has not been studied in a plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) process
During the growth process of the Vertical graphene (VG) film by PECVD, we found that the VG films can be grown on dielectric substrates even at temperature as low as 500 °C without any metal substrate, whereas the growth rate is quite low under the low growth temperature

Summary

Introduction

Various carbon nanostructures have received enormous attention recently due to their excellent physical properties. Graphene, an sp2-hybridized twodimensional carbon material, shows excellent physical properties in intrinsic mobility [1, 2], mechanical strength [3], optical transmittance [4] and electric conductivity [5]. Enormous processes have been developed for the synthesis of graphene including exfoliation from highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG), reduction of chemically exfoliated graphene oxide (RGO), thermal decomposition of SiC and chemical vapour deposition (CVD). These processes generate in-plane-oriented monolayer or multi-layer graphene films. It can pave the way for more applicable substrate materials

Methods

Results

Conclusion