Journal
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 24, Issue 36, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0957-4484/24/36/365602
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [NSF DMR 0845358]
- Materials, Structures and Device (MSD) Center, one of the five programs in the focus center research program (FCRP), a Semiconductor Research Corporation program
- MIT/Army Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN)
- Leading Foreign Research Institute Recruitment Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)
- Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) [2012-00109]
- Graphene Approaches to Terahertz Electronics (GATE)-MURI [N00014-09-1-1063]
- Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Institutional Program
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Materials Research [0845358] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST), Republic of Korea [2Z03880] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
- National Research Foundation of Korea [2009-00454] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
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Copper foil is the most common substrate to synthesize monolayer graphene by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The surface morphology and conditions of the copper foil can be very different depending on the various suppliers or different batches. These surface properties of copper strongly affect the growth behavior of graphene, thus rendering the growth conditions irreproducible when different batches of Cu foil are used. Furthermore, the quality of the graphene is severely affected as well. In this work, we report a facile method of copper pre-cleaning to improve the graphene quality and the reproducibility of the growth process. We found that the commercial Ni etchant (based on nitric acid) or nitric acid is the most effective cleaning agent among various acidic or basic solutions. The graphene grown on thus-treated copper surfaces is very clean and mostly monolayer when observed under scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical imaging, as compared to the graphene grown on untreated copper foil. Different batches (but with the same catalog number) of copper foil from Alfa Aesar Company were examined to explore the effect of copper pre-cleaning; consistent growth results were obtained when pre-cleaning was used. This method overcomes a commonly encountered problem in graphene growth and could become one of the standard protocols for preparing the copper foil substrate for growing graphene or other 2D materials.
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