New Growth Frontier: Superclean Graphene

The last 10 years have witnessed significant progress in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of graphene films. However, major hurdles remain in achieving the excellent quality and scalability of CVD graphene needed for industrial production and applications. Early efforts were mainly focused on increasing the single-crystalline domain size, large-area uniformity, growth rate, and controllability of layer thickness and on decreasing the defect concentrations. An important recent advance was the discovery of the inevitable contamination phenomenon of CVD graphene film during high-temperature growth processes and the superclean growth technique, which is closely related to the surface defects and to the peeling-off and transfer quality. Superclean graphene represents a new frontier in CVD graphene research. In this Perspective, we aim to provide comprehensive understanding of the intrinsic growth contamination and the experimental solution of making superclean graphene and to provide an outlook for future commercial production of high-quality CVD graphene films.