High-Throughput Graphene Synthesis in Gapless Stacks
Ya-Ping Hsieh*, Ching-Hua Shih, Yi-Jing Chiu& Mario Hofmann
Chemistry of Materials, 28 (1), 40–43 (2016).
The scalable production of high quality graphene could enable many applications ranging from high-speed electronics to transparent solar cells. While chemical vapor deposition has demonstrated the ability to produce graphene with suitable properties the scaling to application-relevant graphene quantities remains a challenge. We here demonstrate the high throughput synthesis of graphene in a batch process by growth on gapless substrate stacks. Refractory layers in direct contact with the growth substrate enable growth in close-packing and were shown to allow the simultaneous production of 280 cm2 graphene in a conventional 1-inch furnace. The presented gapless stacking method gives rise to a confinement effect and a molecular-flow controlled transport regime. This growth condition was found to result in a self-limiting nucleation density that is independent of growth conditions and causes the large scale uniformity of graphene properties within the stack, as elucidated by carrier transport and spectroscopy. Finally, the presented nucleation control yields a significant enhancement of graphene quality compared to conventional growth. The presented novel growth process is compatible with other 2D materials and opens up a new route towards their scalable production for research and commercial applications.