Graphene is a remarkable two-dimensional (2D) material that is of great interest to both academia and industry. It has outstanding electrical and thermal conductivity and good mechanical behavior with promising applications in electronic devices, supercapacitors, batteries, composite materials, flexible transparent displays, solar cells, and sensors. Several methods have been used to produce either pristine graphene or doped graphene. These include chemical vapor deposition (CVD), mechanical exfoliation, decomposition of SiC, liquid-phase exfoliation, pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Among these methods, PLD, which is routinely used for growing complex oxide thin films has proved to be an alternative to the more widely reported CVD method for producing graphene thin films, because of its advantages. Here we review the synthesis of graphene using PLD. We describe recent progress in preparing pristine graphene and doped graphene by PLD, including deposition processes and characterization. The goal of this complete survey is to describe the advantages of using the technique for graphene growth. The review will also help researchers to better understand graphene synthesis using the PLD technique.

New synthesis routes to tailor graphene properties by controlling the concentration and chemical configuration of dopants show great promise. Herein we report the direct reproducible synthesis of 2-3% nitrogen-doped ‘few-layer’ graphene from a solid state nitrogen carbide a-C:N source synthesized by femtosecond pulsed laser ablation. Analytical investigations, including synchrotron facilities, made it possible to identify the configuration and chemistry of the nitrogen-doped graphene films. Auger mapping successfully quantified the 2D distribution of the number of graphene layers over the surface, and hence offers a new original way to probe the architecture of graphene sheets. The films mainly consist in a Bernal ABA stacking three-layer architecture, with a layer number distribution ranging from 2 to 6. Nitrogen doping affects the charge carrier distribution but has no significant effects on the number of lattice defects or disorders, compared to undoped graphene synthetized in similar conditions. Pyridinic, quaternary and pyrrolic nitrogen are the dominant chemical configurations, pyridinic N being preponderant at the scale of the film architecture. This work opens highly promising perspectives for the development of self-organized nitrogen-doped graphene materials, as synthetized from solid carbon nitride, with various functionalities, and for the characterization of 2D materials using a significant new methodology.