Fast growth of inch-sized single-crystalline graphene from a controlled single nucleus on Cu–Ni alloys

• Published in: Nature materials Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 43 - 47
• Main Authors: Wu, Tianru, Zhang, Xuefu, Yuan, Qinghong, Xue, Jiachen, Lu, Guangyuan, Liu, Zhihong, Wang, Huishan, Wang, Haomin, Ding, Feng, Yu, Qingkai, Xie, Xiaoming, Jiang, Mianheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.01.2016; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 121/135; 121/143; 140/133; 639/301/1005/1007; 639/301/1023/1026; 639/301/357/551; 639/301/357/918/1055; Alloys; Biomaterials; Condensed Matter Physics; COPPER ALLOYS (40 TO 99.3 CU); Copper base alloys; Crystals; ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS; Electronics; Feeding; Graphene; letter; Materials Science; Monolayers; Nanotechnology; Nucleation; NUCLEI; Optical and Electronic Materials; Single crystals; Substrates
• ISSN: 1476-1122; 1476-4660; 1476-4660
• DOI: 10.1038/nmat4477

A modified chemical vapour deposition set-up allowing extremely localized injection of carbon precursors on a Cu–Ni substrate is used for the fast growth of large-area single-crystalline monolayers of graphene. Wafer-scale single-crystalline graphene monolayers are highly sought after as an ideal platform for electronic and other applications 1 , 2 , 3 . At present, state-of-the-art growth methods based on chemical vapour deposition allow the synthesis of one-centimetre-sized single-crystalline graphene domains in ∼12 h, by suppressing nucleation events on the growth substrate 4 . Here we demonstrate an efficient strategy for achieving large-area single-crystalline graphene by letting a single nucleus evolve into a monolayer at a fast rate. By locally feeding carbon precursors to a desired position of a substrate composed of an optimized Cu–Ni alloy, we synthesized an ∼1.5-inch-large graphene monolayer in 2.5 h. Localized feeding induces the formation of a single nucleus on the entire substrate, and the optimized alloy activates an isothermal segregation mechanism that greatly expedites the growth rate 5 , 6 . This approach may also prove effective for the synthesis of wafer-scale single-crystalline monolayers of other two-dimensional materials.