Two-dimensional (2D) materials offer immense potential for scientific breakthroughs and technological innovations. While early demonstrations of 2D material-based electronics, optoelectronics, flextronics, straintronics, twistronics, and biomimetic devices exploited micromechanically-exfoliated single crystal flakes, recent years have witnessed steady progress in large-area growth techniques such as physical vapor deposition (PVD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and metal–organic CVD (MOCVD). However, use of high growth temperatures, chemically-active growth precursors and promoters, and the need for epitaxy often limit direct growth of 2D materials on the substrates of interest for commercial applications. This has led to the development of a large number of methods for the layer transfer of 2D materials from the growth substrate to the target application substrate with varying degrees of cleanliness, uniformity, and transfer-related damage. This review aims to catalog and discuss these layer transfer methods. In particular, the processes, advantages, and drawbacks of various transfer methods are discussed, as is their applicability to different technological platforms of interest for 2D material implementation.
more »
« less
Advances in transferring chemical vapour deposition graphene: a review
The unique two-dimensional structure and outstanding electronic, thermal, and mechanical properties of graphene have attracted the interest of scientists and engineers from various fields. The first step in translating the excellent properties of graphene into practical applications is the preparation of large area, continuous graphene films. Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) graphene has received increasing attention because it provides access to large-area, uniform, and continuous films of high quality. However, current CVD synthetic techniques utilize metal substrates (Cu or Ni) to catalyse the growth of graphene and post-growth transfer of the graphene film to a substrate of interest is critical for most applications such as electronics, photonics, and spintronics. Here we discuss recent advances in the transfer of as-grown CVD graphene to target substrates. The methods that afford CVD graphene on a target substrate are summarized under three categories: transfer with a support layer, transfer without a support layer, and direct growth on target substrates. At present the first two groups dominate the field and research efforts are directed towards refining the choice of the support layer. The support layer plays a vital role in the transfer process because it has direct contact with the atomically thin graphene surface, affecting its properties and determining the quality of the transferred graphene.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1305724
- PAR ID:
- 10079302
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Materials Horizons
- Volume:
- 4
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2051-6347
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1054 to 1063
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
more » « less
Abstract Since the isolation of graphene and numerous demonstrations of its unique properties, the expectations for this material to be implemented in many future commercial applications have been enormous. However, to date, challenges still remain. One of the key challenges is the fabrication of graphene in a manner that satisfies processing requirements. While transfer of graphene can be used, this tends to damage or contaminate it, which degrades its performance. Hence, there is an important drive to grow graphene directly over a number of technologically important materials, viz., different substrate materials, so as to avoid the need for transfer. One of the more successful approaches to synthesis graphene is chemical vapor deposition (CVD), which is well established. Historically, transition metal substrates are used due to their catalytic properties. However, in recent years this has developed to include many nonmetal substrate systems. Moreover, both solid and molten substrate forms have also been demonstrated. In addition, the current trend to progress flexible devices has spurred interest in graphene growth directly over flexible materials surfaces. All these aspects are presented in this review which presents the developments in available substrates for graphene fabrication by CVD, with a focus primarily on large area graphene.
-
The rate at which graphene is used in different fields of science and engineering has only increased over the past decade and shows no indication of saturating. At the same time, the most common source of high-quality graphene is through chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth on copper foils with subsequent wet transfer steps that bring environmental problems and technical challenges due to the compliance of copper foils. To overcome these issues, thin copper films deposited on silicon wafers have been used, but the high temperatures required for graphene growth can cause dewetting of the copper film and consequent challenges in obtaining uniform growth. In this work, we explore sapphire as a substrate for the direct growth of graphene without any metal catalyst at conventional metal CVD temperatures. First, we found that annealing the substrate prior to growth was a crucial step to improve the quality of graphene that can be grown directly on such substrates. The graphene grown on annealed sapphire was uniformly bilayer and had some of the lowest Raman D/G ratios found in the literature. In addition, dry transfer experiments have been performed that have provided a direct measure of the adhesion energy, strength, and range of interactions at the sapphire/graphene interface. The adhesion energy of graphene to sapphire is lower than that of graphene grown on copper, but the strength of the graphene–sapphire interaction is higher. The quality of the several centimeter scale transfer was evaluated using Raman, SEM, and AFM as well as fracture mechanics concepts. Based on the evaluation of the electrical characteristics of the graphene synthesized in this work, this work has implications for several potential electronic applications.more » « less
-
more » « less
Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) transistors are a promising alternative for the semiconductor industry due to their large on/off current ratio (>1010), immunity to short-channel effects, and unique switching characteristics. MoS2 has drawn considerable interest due to its intriguing electrical, optical, sensing, and catalytic properties. Monolayer MoS2 is a semiconducting material with a direct band gap of ~1.9 eV, which can be tuned. Commercially, the aim of synthesizing a novel material is to grow high-quality samples over a large area and at a low cost. Although chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth techniques are associated with a low-cost pathway and large-area material growth, a drawback concerns meeting the high crystalline quality required for nanoelectronic and optoelectronic applications. This research presents a lower-temperature CVD for the repeatable synthesis of large-size mono- or few-layer MoS2 using the direct vapor phase sulfurization of MoO3. The samples grown on Si/SiO2 substrates demonstrate a uniform single-crystalline quality in Raman spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning transmission electron microscopy. These characterization techniques were targeted to confirm the uniform thickness, stoichiometry, and lattice spacing of the MoS2 layers. The MoS2 crystals were deposited over the entire surface of the sample substrate. With a detailed discussion of the CVD setup and an explanation of the process parameters that influence nucleation and growth, this work opens a new platform for the repeatable synthesis of highly crystalline mono- or few-layer MoS2 suitable for optoelectronic application.
-
Sreenivasan, S.V. (Ed.)A roll-to-roll (R2R) technique is especially desirable for transfer of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene towards high-speed, low-cost, renewable, and environmentally friendly manufacturing of graphene-based electronic devices, such as flexible touchscreens, field effect transistors and organic solar cells. A R2R graphene dry transfer system is recently developed. Monolayer graphene is transferred from a copper growth substrate to a polymer backing layer by mechanical peeling. In this work, we present an experimental study to examine the effects of line speed of the mechanical peeling process on the transferred graphene quality. It is shown that the effect of line speed is not monotonic, and an optimal speed exists to yield the highest and most consistent electrical conductivity of transferred graphene among the process conditions studied. This study provides understanding of process parameter effects and demonstrates the potential of the R2R dry transfer process for large-scale CVD graphene toward industrial applications.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/C7MH00485K
