Abstract
Direct deposition of graphene on substrates would avoid costly, time consuming and defect inducing transfer techniques. In this paper we used ultrathin films of Ni, with thickness ranging from 5 to 50 nm, as a catalytic surface on glass to seed and promote chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of graphene. Different regimes and dynamics were studied for various parameters including temperature and reaction time. When a critical temperature (700 °C) was reached, Ni films retracted and holes formed that are open to the glass surface, where graphene deposited. After CVD, the residual Ni could be etched away and the glass substrate with graphene regained maximum transparency (>90%). The fact that we could achieve low growth temperatures indicates the potential of the technique to widen the range of substrate materials over which graphene can be directly deposited. We demonstrated this by depositing graphene patterns on ultrathin, 100 μm thick, sheet of glass with low strain point (670 °C), particularly suitable for flexible electronic and optoelectronic devices.
Highlights
Since graphene was first isolated in 2004 by A
The highest quality chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene has been obtained on μm-thick Cu foils [9] due to the fact that carbon atoms remain on the catalyst surface and single layer graphene (SLG) sheets are grown
While single crystal Ni films dewetting on oxides surfaces (e.g. MgO) has been widely investigated [41], not much investigation has been devoted to the study of polycrystalline Ni films dewetting (≤50 nm)
Summary
Since graphene was first isolated in 2004 by A. CVD has the potential of great versatility and high process yield for production of high quality graphene over large areas [14] With such technique, graphene synthesis is typically obtained by employing transition catalytic metals in order to reduce the activation energy of carbon decomposition from a hydrocarbon gas [10,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. Reports homogeneous direct growth of graphene on glass by CVD technique using high temperatures (1000-1100°C) and reaction times of 1-7 hours, these conditions being not suitable for a wide range of substrates. The low temperature and short processing time were essential to achieve direct growth of graphene on flexible substrates of Corning® Willow® Glass, which has a low strain point (670°C), demonstrating the potential of the proposed techniques for transparent flexible electronics
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