Towards Graphene Remote Plasma Interfacial Growth and Auger Spectra Simulation

Abstract

Graphene, the single layer of carbon atoms which form a honeycomb lattice, has excellent physical properties that make it an well known material for fundamental and applied research. A surface sensitive technique known as Auger electron spectroscopy is ideal for studying graphene due to the thickness of the graphene. A complete understanding of how the various peak in the graphene Auger spectra occur is not yet available. Towards explaining these peaks, a simulation which predicts the Auger energies of neutral free carbon has been scripted. Growth of graphene, which is mostly likely to see the greatest implementation in industry occurs in chemical vapor deposition systems. In order to avoid time-consuming and potentially damaging transfer processes, a type of graphene growth which occurs at the interface of a nickel catalyst and the underlying substrate which requires no transfer is experimented with. Here, growths have occurred on a remote plasma inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition system at various gas ratios of methane to hydrogen, temperatures, and plasma conditions to explore growth optimization. The growths are subsequently analyzed using Raman spectroscopy, X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Auger electron spectroscopy. In general growths without plasma tended to be more graphite-like and growths with plasma tended to be more