Toward High Throughput Interconvertible Graphane-to-Graphene Growth and Patterning

We report a new route to prepare high quality, monolayer graphene by the dehydrogenation of graphane-like film grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Large-area rnonolayer graphane-like film is first produced by remote-discharged radio frequency plasma beam deposition at 650 degrees C on Cu/Ti-coated SiO2-Si. The advantages of the plasma deposition include very short deposition time (<5 min) and a lower growth temperature of 650 degrees C compared to the current thermal chemical vapor deposition approach (1000 degrees C). Near edge X-ray adsorption, Raman spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy as well as scanning tunneling microscopy have been applied to characterize the graphane-to-graphene transition for the as-deposited films. The fingerprint quantum hall effect of monolayer graphene can be obtained on the fully dehydrogenated graphane-like film; four fully quantized half-integer plateaus are observed. The interconvertibility between graphane-like and graphene here opens up a possible route for the fabrication of regions with varying conductivity in a single deposition system using maskless, laser writing.