Raman Study of Strain Relaxation from Grain Boundaries in Epitaxial Graphene Grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition on SiC

Strains in graphene play a significant role in graphene-based electronics, but many aspects of the grain boundary effects on strained graphene remain unclear. Here, the relationship between grain boundary and strain property of graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on the C-face of SiC substrate has been investigated by Raman spectroscopy. It is shown that abundant boundary-like defects exist in the graphene film and the blue-shifted 2D-band frequency, which results from compressive strain in graphene film, shifts downward linearly as 1/L-a increases. Strain relaxation caused by grain boundary diffusion is considered to be the reason and the mechanism is analyzed in detail.