Growth of High-Quality Centimeter-Size Single-Crystal Graphene on High-Temperature Annealed Cu (111) Substrate

Abstract

Abstract: Two-dimensional (2D) graphene has shown great potential of breakthrough of Moore's law limitation due to its atomic thickness in electronic devices. Up to now, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a widely applied method for graphene growth due to its low-cost, large-area production, and easy control in layer number. However, the CVD-grown graphene usually suffers from relatively low quality derived from the polycrystalline nature of catalytic metal (e.g., Cu) substrates. Herein, single-crystal Cu (111) substrates were fabricated by a high-temperature annealing process, initial nucleation of graphene on it has been well controlled, and high-quality and centimeter-size single-crystal graphene was achieved. The Cu (111) substrate provides onefold orientation for the graphene growth according to their lattice matching relation, and domain boundaries of neighboring graphene nuclei could stitch together. The as-grown single-crystal graphene has an average sheet resistance of 607.5 Ω · sq^-1. Compared to that of grown on the pristine polycrystalline Cu (1 415.7 Ω · sq^-1), it shows high electrical conductivity. High-temperature annealing purified the Cu foils, and induced a clean graphene surface with lower roughness. The quality of graphene is further verified by using it in a field-effect transistor (FET), resulting in a maximum switch ratio of 145.5 and carrier mobility of 2.31×10³ cm² · V^-1 · s^-1. Based on these results, we believe that the single-crystal graphene in present work is also feasible for fabricating other high-performance electronic devices.

Key words: Cu (111), graphene, high-temperature annealing, chemical vapor deposition, field-effect transistor

CLC Number:

O782⁺.7

QI Jianhai, CHEN Yang, YUE Yuanyuan, LYU Bingchen, CHENG Yuang, ZHU Fengqian, JIA Yuping, LI Shaojuan, SUN Xiaojuan, LI Dabing. Growth of High-Quality Centimeter-Size Single-Crystal Graphene on High-Temperature Annealed Cu (111) Substrate[J]. JOURNAL OF SYNTHETIC CRYSTALS, 2023, 52(11): 1980-1988.

References

[1] NOVOSELOV K S, GEIM A K, MOROZOV S V, et al. Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films[J]. Science, 2004, 306(5696): 666-669.
[2] LIU F, MING P B, LI J. Ab initio calculation of ideal strength and phonon instability of graphene under tension[J]. Physical Review B, 2007, 76(6): 064120.
[3] MOROZOV S V, NOVOSELOV K S, KATSNELSON M I, et al. Giant intrinsic carrier mobilities in graphene and its bilayer[J]. Physical Review Letters, 2008, 100(1): 016602.
[4] NOVOSELOV K S, FAL'KO V I, COLOMBO L, et al. A roadmap for graphene[J]. Nature, 2012, 490(7419): 192-200.
[5] GEIM A K. Nobel lecture: random walk to graphene[J]. Reviews of Modern Physics, 2011, 83(3): 851-862.
[6] NOVOSELOV K S. Graphene: materials in the Flatland (Nobel lecture)[J]. Angewandte Chemie, 2011, 50(31): 6986-7002.
[7] NOVOSELOV K S, JIANG D, SCHEDIN F, et al. Two-dimensional atomic crystals[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2005, 102(30): 10451-10453.
[8] BLAKE P, BRIMICOMBE P D, NAIR R R, et al. Graphene-based liquid crystal device[J]. Nano Letters, 2008, 8(6): 1704-1708.
[9] HERNANDEZ Y, NICOLOSI V, LOTYA M, et al. High-yield production of graphene by liquid-phase exfoliation of graphite[J]. Nature Nanotechnology, 2008, 3(9): 563-568.
[10] COLEMAN J N, LOTYA M, O'NEILL A, et al. Two-dimensional nanosheets produced by liquid exfoliation of layered materials[J]. Science, 2011, 331(6017): 568-571.
[11] LI M, ZHOU S S, WANG R Y, et al. In situ formed nanoparticle-assisted growth of large-size single crystalline h-BN on copper[J]. Nanoscale, 2018, 10(37): 17865-17872.
[12] LI X S, CAI W W, AN J, et al. Large-area synthesis of high-quality and uniform graphene films on copper foils[J]. Science, 2009, 324(5932): 1312-1314.
[13] BAE S, KIM H, LEE Y, et al. Roll-to-roll production of 30-inch graphene films for transparent electrodes[J]. Nature Nanotechnology, 2010, 5(8): 574-578.
[14] WU Y P, CHOU H, JI H X, et al. Growth mechanism and controlled synthesis of AB-stacked bilayer graphene on Cu-Ni alloy foils[J]. ACS Nano, 2012, 6(9): 7731-7738.
[15] RUT'KOV E V, AFANAS'EVA E Y, PETROV V N, et al. Fabrication of graphene and graphite films on the Ni(111) surface[J]. Technical Physics, 2016, 61(11): 1724-1728.
[16] SUN J, NAM Y, LINDVALL N, et al. Growth mechanism of graphene on platinum: surface catalysis and carbon segregation[J]. Applied Physics Letters, 2014, 104(15): 152107.
[17] WANG Q, WEI L, SULLIVAN M, et al. Graphene layers on Cu and Ni (111) surfaces in layer controlled graphene growth[J]. RSC Advances, 2013, 3(9): 3046-3053.
[18] YANG S Y, ZHANG J X, CHI M Y, et al. Excellent superelasticity of Cu-Al-Mn-Cr shape memory single crystal obtained only through annealing cast polycrystalline alloy[J]. Scripta Materialia, 2019, 165: 20-24.
[19] JIN S, HUANG M, KWON Y, et al. Colossal grain growth yields single-crystal metal foils by contact-free annealing[J]. Science, 2018, 362(6418): 1021-1025.
[20] WU M H, ZHANG Z B, XU X Z, et al. Seeded growth of large single-crystal copper foils with high-index facets[J]. Nature, 2020, 581(7809): 406-410.
[21] LI L, MA T, YU W, et al. Fast growth of centimeter-scale single-crystal copper foils with high-index planes by the edge-incision effect[J]. 2D Materials, 2021, 8(3): 035019.
[22] XU X Z, ZHANG Z H, DONG J C, et al. Ultrafast epitaxial growth of metre-sized single-crystal graphene on industrial Cu foil[J]. Science Bulletin, 2017, 62(15): 1074-1080.
[23] CHEN Y, ZHANG N, LI Y F, et al. Microscale-patterned graphene electrodes for organic light-emitting devices by a simple patterning strategy[J]. Advanced Optical Materials, 2018, 6(13): 1701348.
[24] GROOVER M P. Fundamentals of modern manufacturing: materials, processes and systems[M]. Wiley: Hoboken, NJ, 2019.
[25] LUO D, CHOE M, BIZAO R A, et al. Folding and fracture of single-crystal graphene grown on a Cu(111) foil[J]. Advanced Materials, 2022, 34(15): 2110509.
[26] SRIDHARA K, FEIGELSON B N, WOLLMERSHAUSER J A, et al. Electrochemically prepared polycrystalline copper surface for the growth of hexagonal boron nitride[J]. Crystal Growth & Design, 2017, 17(4): 1669-1678.
[27] CHO J Y, MIRPURI K, LEE D N, et al. Texture investigation of copper interconnects with a different line width[J]. Journal of Electronic Materials, 2005, 34(1): 53-61.
[28] ROBINSON Z R, TYAGI P, MURRAY T M, et al. Substrate grain size and orientation of Cu and Cu-Ni foils used for the growth of graphene films[J]. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A, 2012, 30(1): 011401.
[29] SONG L, CI L J, LU H, et al. Large scale growth and characterization of atomic hexagonal boron nitride layers[J]. Nano Letters, 2010, 10(8): 3209-3215.
[30] XIA F N, FARMER D B, LIN Y M, et al. Graphene field-effect transistors with high on/off current ratio and large transport band gap at room temperature[J]. Nano Letters, 2010, 10(2): 715-718.
[31] DENG T, ZHANG Z H, LIU Y X, et al. Three-dimensional graphene field-effect transistors as high-performance photodetectors[J]. Nano Letters, 2019, 19(3): 1494-1503.
[32] JMAI B, SILVA V, MENDES P M. 2D electronics based on graphene field effect transistors: tutorial for modelling and simulation[J]. Micromachines, 2021, 12(8): 979.