Direct fabrication of graphene on SiO2 enabled by thin film stress engineering

Abstract

We demonstrate direct production of graphene on SiO2 by CVD growth of graphene at the interface between a Ni film and the SiO2 substrate, followed by dry mechanical delamination of the Ni using adhesive tape. This result is enabled by understanding of the competition between stress evolution and microstructure development upon annealing of the Ni prior to the graphene growth step. When the Ni film remains adherent after graphene growth, the balance between residual stress and adhesion governs the ability to mechanically remove the Ni after the CVD process. In this study the graphene on SiO2 comprises micron-scale domains, ranging from monolayer to multilayer. The graphene has >90% coverage across centimeter-scale dimensions, limited by the size of our CVD chamber. Further engineering of the Ni film microstructure and stress state could enable manufacturing of highly uniform interfacial graphene followed by clean mechanical delamination over practically indefinite dimensions. Moreover, our findings suggest that preferential adhesion can enable production of 2-D materials directly on application-relevant substrates. This is attractive compared to transfer methods, which can cause mechanical damage and leave residues behind.

Graphene-Based Nanomaterials: Biological and Medical Applications and Toxicity

“…By this approach, authors showed that graphene grown at the Ni/SiO 2 interface can be directly retained on a clean silicon dioxide substrate by mechanical removal of the nickel or by in situ delamination of the nickel at high temperature. Importantly, this process eliminates the need for an additional step to transfer graphene from the metal catalyst film to the substrate and resulted in greater than 90% coverage across centimeter-scale dimensions [163]. To achieve large, high-quality single crystals of graphene, Hao and coworkers used the CVD method to grown graphene on cooper (Cu) by a controlled oxygen (O) surface.…”

A critical review on the contributions of chemical and physical factors toward the nucleation and growth of large-area graphene

“…Hart et al [109] successfully produced graphene on SiO 2 /Si substrate using cold-wall CVD. In this study, Ni and SiO 2 are stacked together prior to graphene growth.…”

Graphene-Paper Based Electrochemical Sensors

“…They also demonstrated that as-synthesized graphene films could be transferred to other substrates (Figure 1b and c). To meet some special requirements, non-metal materials, such as Si [14,15], SiO 2 [26][27][28], BN [29,30] and Si 3 N 4 [31,32], were also used as substrates. However, the non-metal substrates showed the drawback limitations including slow growth rate and discontinuous size.…”