Large-scale Production of AB-Stacked Bilayer Graphene Using Ethanol as Precursor

Riju Singhal, Mathieu R. Monville, Shihsheng Chang, Karlheinz Strobl
CVD Equipment Corporation, 355 S. Technology Drive, Central Islip, NY 11722, USA

Abstract

Inexpensive approaches for the synthesis of high-quality CVD graphene is sought after in order to have graphene enter industrial fabrication and be made available for commercial applications. Depending on the nature and preparation of the catalyst substrate, the precursor used and the processing conditions of CVD growth (pressure, temperature, gas ratios), growth kinetics and regimes can change drastically and lead to diverse forms of graphene (partial or full coverage, monolayer, bilayer or multilayer, polycrystalline or monocrystalline).

Among the forms of CVD graphene that attract interest is the AB-Stacked bilayer configuration, which presents high potential for electronic applications, the main reason laying in the existence and tunability of an electronic bandgap in this 2D material without having to appeal to chemical doping, which is usually detrimental to carrier mobility.

Recent advances in the controlled growth of AB-Stacked bilayer graphene (BLG) have defined ethanol as a precursor of choice for the self-limiting CVD growth of BLG, using the so-called copper enclosure concept [1].

In this work, we present how we successfully implemented such bilayer CVD graphene ethanol based growth with the simple addition of an ethanol bubbler to our universal, patent-pending CVD platform [2,3] which could already produce large-scale high-quality monolayer polycrystalline graphene and mm-large monocrystalline single-layer graphene islands. We believe this result, using our universal engineering solution for CVD graphene, will bring research on bilayer graphene for the scientific community as well as the industry to the next level.

References

[1] “Equilibrium CVD Growth of AB-Stacked Bilayer Graphene”, P.Zhao et al., ACS Nano, (2014), submitted
[2] Scalable 2D-FILM CVD Synthesis, patent pending.
[3] “Towards industrial scale production of CVD graphene”, R.Singhal et al., MRS Fall 2014, Boston.

Presentation

Presented by Karlheinz Strobl at the MRS Spring 2015 Meeting in San Francisco, CA