Nucleation and growth dynamics of graphene grown through low power capacitive coupled radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

We present the study on graphene growth on Cu substrate through low power capacitive coupled radio frequency (RF) plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Fully-covered graphene was grown on Cu substrate through a plasma composed of various argon/methane/hydrogen gas ratio with a 50 W RF power source within a minute under a relatively low substrate temperature at 850 ∘C. The nucleation and growth dynamics is further investigated through processing and analysis of the images acquired through scanning electron microscopy, and interpreted with a modified Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov model. The roles of hydrogen in limiting the nucleation density and stabilization of the graphene grain edges are discussed in light of the analysis, and a time dependent grain expansion rate in which the graphene grains grow fast at the early stage and saturated at later stage is implemented into the model to achieve good fitting of the coverage evolution.