Fluorobenzene and Water‐Promoted Rapid Growth of Vertical Graphene Arrays by Electric‐Field‐Assisted PECVD

Abstract

Vertical graphene (VG) arrays show exposed sharp edges, ultra‐low electrical resistance, large surface‐to‐volume ratio, and low light reflectivity, thus having great potential in emerging applications, including field emission, sensing, energy storage devices, and stray light shields. Although plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) is regarded as an effective approach for the synthesis of VG, it is still challenging to increase the growth rate and height of VG arrays simultaneously. Herein, a fluorobenzene and water‐assisted method to rapidly grow VG arrays in an electric field‐assisted PECVD system is developed. Fluorobenzene‐based carbon sources are used to produce highly electronegative fluorine radicals to accelerate the decomposition of methanol and promote the growth of VG. Water is applied to produce hydroxyl radicals in order to etch amorphous carbon and accelerate the VG growth. The fastest growth rate can be up to 15.9 µm h−1. Finally, VG arrays with a height of 144 µm are successfully synthesized at an average rate of 14.4 µm h−1. As a kind of super black material, these VG arrays exhibit an ultra‐low reflectance of 0.25%, showing great prospect in stray light shielding.

Recent Progress of Vertical Graphene: Preparation, Structure Engineering, and Emerging Energy Applications

“…Compared with thermal CVD (T-CVD), [27,41] PECVD is the principal technique used for VG fabrication currently, [15,17,37,[45][46][47] because of its intriguing merits of low substrate temperature, [15] catalyst-free substrates, [18] high growth rate, [48] and wellcontrolled conditions for nanostructure ordering. [45] However, the growth of VG in PECVD is quite a complex process influenced by several factors including plasma source, [19,49] gas precursor and ratio, [50] and substrate temperature, [51] and consequently the morphology and defects of the VG are significantly affected, which can complicate the growth mechanism and make it challenging to design structures for various applications.…”

Position-Induced Controllable Growth of Vertically Oriented Graphene Using Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

“…Then, some research induces extra control methods to break the limitation of routine synthesis. For example, electric fields , (or magnetic fields) are added in PECVD by plate electrodes (or solenoids) to influence the growth process of VG, by which the growth location and structure of VG flakes are adjusted.…”