Incorporation of plasma into CVD graphene growth

Jake Arwe with Xuan Gao

Incorporation of plasma into CVD graphene growth

[paper]

Graphene is a 2D crystalline sheet of Carbon bonded together in a hexagonal lattice. Its unique structure gives it valuable optical and electrical properties that could be used in nanoelectronics or other fields. Current methods for graphene production do not reliably yield high quality graphene crystals on a large scale. A current method for graphene production is chemical vapor deposition (CVD), which involves dissociating carbon-based gas (such as methane) at high temperatures (>800 oC), and nucleating graphene on certain metal substrates (e.g. polycrystalline Cu). This project aims to create large scale and high quality graphene at less stringent conditions (e.g. lower temperature) and/or on other substrates (such as silicon), by putting methane in a plasma state before initiating growth.