Large Area, Few-Layer Graphene Films on Arbitrary Substrates by Chemical Vapor Deposition

Alfonso Reina, Xiaoting Jia, John Ho, Daniel Nezich, Hyungbin Son, Vladimir Bulovic, Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Jing Kong (2009). Large Area, Few-Layer Graphene Films on Arbitrary Substrates by Chemical Vapor Deposition Nano Letters, 9 (1), 30-35 DOI: 10.1021/nl801827v

A very nice CVD paper where the graphene is transferred to a device friendly substrate (SiO2). The authors used chemical vapor deposition (CVD, also discussed here) on a polycrystalline nickel film, pumping hydrogen and methane gases at ambient pressure and 900-1000 C temperatures. The graphene grown was varied in the number of layers, with the larger number of layers occuring at the step edges of the Ni substrate. The graphene was transfered to SiO2 (although it could have been any other substrate) by protecting graphene with the polymer PMMA, etching the nickel away, and then placing it on the SiO2 surface. The transfer doesn't introduce many more defects, which is quite nice. They mention that some of the multilayers they saw on the nickel might have been electronically disconnected, meaning that they will still act like single-layer graphene (this is also seen sometimes with epitaxial graphene). Here's the stats on their graphene:

Sheet resistance: 770-1000 ohms/cm2
Optical transmittance: around 90% in the 500-1000nm range
On/off ratio at high voltage: between 1.3 and 2
Mobility for e's and holes: between 100-2000 cm2/V (huge range)

Moral of the story: This paper makes decent-quality graphene by CVD at ambient pressure, and they come up with a very nifty way to transfer their graphene to a useable substrate, an approach that overcomes a large disadvantage of using CVD to make graphene.