Heterogeneous Solid Carbon Source-Assisted Growth of High-Quality Graphene via CVD at Low Temperatures

• Published in: Advanced functional materials Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 562 - 568
• Main Authors: Lee, Eunho, Lee, Hyo Chan, Jo, Sae Byeok, Lee, Hansol, Lee, Nam-Suk, Park, Chan Gyung, Lee, Seong Kyu, Kim, Hyun Ho, Bong, Hyojin, Cho, Kilwon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 26.01.2016
• Subjects: Aliphatic compounds; Carbon; Carrier mobility; Chemical vapor deposition; Defects; Density; Graphene; low temperature growth; Polyallylamine hydrochloride; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; solid carbon sources
• ISSN: 1616-301X; 1616-3028
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201504194

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) have been widely used as solid carbon sources for the synthesis of graphene at low temperatures. The inevitable formation of structural defects, however, has significantly limited the quality of the synthesized graphene. This article describes a low‐temperature chemical vapor deposition method that effectively mitigates defect formation in graphene by heterogeneous solid carbon sources containing a mixture of aromatic and aliphatic carbon on a Cu substrate. The addition of small amount of aliphatic carbon sources to the PAH significantly decreases the defect density of graphene synthesized at 400 ≤ T ≤ 600 °C by incorporating small aliphatic carbon fragments into defect sites. The carrier mobility of graphene grown using this heterogeneous solid carbon source is more than five times that of graphene synthesized using only PAH. Two mechanisms are also proposed by which vacancies can be generated during graphene growth using PAH sources on Cu, defect generation due to the disordered packing and the geometric limitation of PAH molecules. This low‐temperature method of synthesizing graphene reduces the degree of defect density using heterogeneous solid carbon sources promises to provide wide utility in electronics applications. A synthetic approach for high‐quality graphene at low temperature via chemical vapor deposition is proposed. The defect density of graphene synthesized at 400 °C is significantly decreased by using mixture of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules and a small amount of aliphatic molecules. The resulting graphene exhibits a high carrier mobility of 1000 cm2 V−1 s−1.