Ultrasmooth metallic foils for growth of high quality graphene by chemical vapor deposition

Synthesis of graphene by chemical vapor deposition is a promising route for manufacturing large-scale high-quality graphene for electronic applications. The quality of the employed substrates plays a crucial role, since the surface roughness and defects alter the graphene growth and cause difficulties in the subsequent graphene transfer. Here, we report on ultrasmooth high-purity copper foils prepared by sputter deposition of Cu thin film on a SiO 2 /Si template, and the subsequent peeling off of the metallic layer from the template. The surface displays a low level of oxidation and contamination, and the roughness of the foil surface is generally defined by the template, and was below 0.6 nm even on a large scale. The roughness and grain size increase occurred during both the annealing of the foils, and catalytic growth of graphene from methane (≈1000 °C), but on the large scale still remained far below the roughness typical for commercial foils. The micro-Raman spectro...

Pavel Procházka, Jindřich Mach, Dominik Bischoff, Zuzana Lišková, Petr Dvořák, Marek Vaňatka, Pauline Simonet, Anastasia Varlet, Dušan Hemzal, Martin Petrenec, Lukáš Kalina, Miroslav Bartošík, Klaus Ensslin, Peter Varga, Jan Čechal and Tomáš Šikola

Click for full article