Investigation of reaction temperature on the synthesis of graphene

Abstract

Graphene, two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms has recently gained attention as some of its properties are promising for many applications. To bring graphene to the production level, synthesis methods are needed for its growth on wafer scale. It has been shown that chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is one of the techniques that can potentially synthesize wafer scale graphene. Recently, copper has gained popularity as an important substrate material for graphene growth due to its lower carbon solubility which allows better control over number of graphene layers. Here we report optimization of graphene growth on copper foils by focusing on investigation of reaction temperature on the synthesis of graphene. Reaction temperature is an important parameter which directly affects the quality and quantity of produced graphene. The synthesis process was carried out at different reaction temperatures from 6000C to 10000C with constant flow rate of methane gas and nitrogen gas at 300 MLPM respectively and constant reaction time of 60 minutes. Then, by using various methods of characterization, optimum temperature for preparation of graphene with minimum amount of structural defects was determined. It was found that higher reaction temperatures lead to higher quality and lesser defect graphene particles with larger size and continuous shape. By applying higher reaction temperature, high amount of graphene particles are preferable to be synthesized.