Cooling rate and energy dependence of pulsed laser fabricated graphene on nickel at reduced temperature

Abstract

Few-layer graphene was fabricated on nickel substrates using pulsed laser deposition at a relatively low temperature of 750 °C. The effects of cooling rate and laser energy on the ability to produce crystalline graphene layers were studied. It was observed that using a cooling rate of 1 and 50 °C/min produced few-layer graphene while the latter gave less defects. Laser energy was a less critical factor as long as the laser energy was below 100 mJ, however a higher laser energy was detrimental to the precipitation process. The mechanisms behind the observation of such phenomena are explained.

Ultraviolet laser deposition of graphene thin films without catalytic layers

“…4 Epitaxial growth on SiC 5 by the sublimation of Si atoms at high temperatures and high vacuum or by etching 6 on the other hand leads to better quality of graphene, but involves high costs in synthesis and subsequent transferring 7 of graphene to desired substrates. 8 Uniform epitaxial graphene layers can be deposited over large areas covered with catalytic metal layers, such as Ni, Pt, Ru, Ir, Cu, and Co, or metal carbides by chemical vapor deposition 9,10 of hydrocarbons as well as pulsed laser deposition 11 (PLD) using suitable targets, such as highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). Here again, removal of the undesired catalysts 12 and transferring of graphene to suitable substrates limit the range of applicability.…”

“…18 The 2D band will be present even in the absence of defects and becomes asymmetric with the appearance of a lower wavenumber shoulder peak, when the number of graphene layers increases beyond 5, as in the case of graphite. 11 The ratio of intensity of 2D band to G band (I 2D /I G ) is often used to extract the number of layers of graphene. 5,18 I 2D /I G is 2 for monolayer graphene and decreases with increase in number of layers, since the G band becomes more prominent.…”

Multi- and few-layer graphene on insulating substrate via pulsed laser deposition technique

“…Use of a precursor may also induce defects in graphene sheets. Among all the techniques, PLD technique offers the advantage to grow the graphene layers directly onto any substrate [20][21][22]. In PLD technique, deposited species (laser ablated particles/ions) are of high kinetic energy therefore good quality thin films can be deposited at relatively lower temperature compared to that of the other techniques.…”

Recent Progress in the Growth and Applications of Graphene as a Smart Material: A Review

“…In the context of the graphene growth, and in parallel to the CVD deposition method, physical vapor deposition has also been reported for the growth of graphene (Koh et al, 2010;Zhang and Feng, 2010b). In UHV, PLD chambers graphite is normally used as the target with a transition metal as the substrate (Figure 9).…”

“…While numerous metals can be used as a catalyst, nickel appears to be the most promising for low temperature growth. Numerous parameters, such as the cooling rate and laser power, impact the quality of graphene films (Koh et al, 2010).…”