skip to main content


Title: 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
NSF-PAR ID:
10079302
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
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
  1. 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
  2. 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.

     
    more » « less
  3. 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
  4. Abstract

    The large‐area synthesis of high‐quality MoS2plays an important role in realizing industrial applications of optoelectronics, nanoelectronics, and flexible devices. However, current techniques for chemical vapor deposition (CVD)‐grown MoS2require a high synthetic temperature and a transfer process, which limits its utilization in device fabrications. Here, the direct synthesis of high‐quality monolayer MoS2with the domain size up to 120 µm by metal‐organic CVD (MOCVD) at a temperature of 320 °C is reported. Owing to the low‐substrate temperature, the MOCVD‐grown MoS2exhibits low impurity doping and nearly unstrained properties on the growth substrate, demonstrating enhanced electronic performance with high electron mobility of 68.3 cm2V−1s−1at room temperature. In addition, by tuning the precursor ratio, a better understanding of the MoS2growth process via a geometric model of the MoS2flake shape, is developed, which can provide further guidance for the synthesis of 2D materials.

     
    more » « less
  5. Abstract

    New technologies are emerging which allow us to manipulate and assemble 2-dimensional (2D) building blocks, such as graphene, into synthetic van der Waals (vdW) solids. Assembly of such vdW solids has enabled novel electronic devices and could lead to control over anisotropic thermal properties through tuning of inter-layer coupling and phonon scattering. Here we report the systematic control of heat flow in graphene-based vdW solids assembled in a layer-by-layer (LBL) fashion. In-plane thermal measurements (between 100 K and 400 K) reveal substrate and grain boundary scattering limit thermal transport in vdW solids composed of one to four transferred layers of graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Such films have room temperature in-plane thermal conductivity of ~400 Wm−1 K−1. Cross-plane thermal conductance approaches 15 MWm−2 K−1for graphene-based vdW solids composed of seven layers of graphene films grown by CVD, likely limited by rotational mismatch between layers and trapped particulates remnant from graphene transfer processes. Our results provide fundamental insight into the in-plane and cross-plane heat carrying properties of substrate-supported synthetic vdW solids, with important implications for emerging devices made from artificially stacked 2D materials.

     
    more » « less