Epitaxial Growth of 6 in. Single-Crystalline Graphene on a Cu/Ni (111) Film at 750 °C via Chemical Vapor Deposition

The future electronic application of graphene highly relies on the production of large-area high-quality single-crystal graphene. However, the growth of single-crystal graphene on different substrates via either single nucleation or seamless stitching is carried out at a temperature of 1000 °C or higher. The usage of this high temperature generates a variety of problems, including complexity of operation, higher contamination, metal evaporation, and wrinkles owing to the mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients between the substrate and graphene. Here, a new approach for the fabrication of ultraflat single-crystal graphene using Cu/Ni (111)/sapphire wafers at lower temperature is reported. It is found that the temperature of epitaxial growth of graphene using Cu/Ni (111) can be reduced to 750 °C, much lower than that of earlier reports on catalytic surfaces. Devices made of graphene grown at 750 °C have a carrier mobility up to ≈9700 cm² V^-1 s^-1 at room temperature. This work shines light on a way toward a much lower temperature growth of high-quality graphene in single crystallinity, which could benefit future electronic applications.