Direct growth of high crystallinity graphene from water-soluble polymer powders

Abstract

The use of solid-state carbon sources is effective to produce graphene by safe and low-cost chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. Water-soluble polymers are generally environmentally friendly and have great potential on large-scale green production of graphene. Here, we systematically study the growth of graphene from water-soluble polymers on copper foils. Two different conversion ways are adopted to investigate the growth mechanism of graphene from water-soluble polymers. We find that the metal-binding functional group hydroxyl strongly influences the vaporization of water-soluble polymers on Cu foils, which hinders the formation of graphene films by rapid thermal treatment. In direct CVD process using water-soluble polymer powders as precursors, oxygenated functional groups in polymers can enhance the crystallinity of as-grown graphene in contrast to solid hydrocarbons without containing oxygen (e.g. polyethylene). Large and continuous graphene films of high quality are synthesized from polyvinyl alcohol and polyethylene glycol. Nitrogen doping in graphene can be easily realized by using nitrogen-containing water-soluble polymers (e.g. polyvinyl pyrrolidone).

High-quality bilayer graphene grown on softened copper foils by atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition

“…In addition, due to the oxidation of Cu foil during the heating by residual oxidative species in AP-CVD system [36][37][38], the oxygen released from copper oxides also participates in the synthetic processes and generates huge impacts on the graphene synthesis. Besides, the oxygen atoms in carbon source (acetone) are non-negligible, which might facilitate the crystallization of BLG [26,27]. Schematic illustration of the proposed mechanism of BLG growth is displayed in Fig.…”

“…The synthesis process was carried out in a thermal CVD furnace with a quartz tube (170 cm in length, 5 cm in diameter) at atmospheric pressure [26,27]. The quartz tube was sealed by two flanges to maintain the reactive atmosphere and avoid contamination.…”

Sustained and Controlled Release of Volatile Precursors for Chemical Vapor Deposition of Graphene at Atmospheric Pressure

“…As chematici llustration of the SCR-APCVD process is shown in Figure 3a,i nw hichathermal CVD furnace system is designed to eliminate contaminants from unintentionally introduced carbon, as described in our previous work. [14] Specifically,t he copperf oil was placed in the central heating zone of the furnace. The NBR-PR/Ac sol (0.1-1 mL) was transferredb y pipette into ap recursor feeder,w hich was loaded at the gas inlet side of the sealed quartz tube.…”

In situ synthesis of monolayer graphene on silicon for near-infrared photodetectors

“…In our experiment, water-solvable PMMA was selected because of its capability of forming large-area uniform lm with tunable thickness on various substrates by spin-coating. 20 A conformal PMMA coating layer on the desired substrate has been demonstrated as a vital step for synthesizing high-quality graphene, which can be attributed to the intimate relationship between the layer number of graphene and the carbon distribution in PMMA. 21,22 In order to verify the uniformity of PMMA spin-coated on Si, AFM measurement was performed.…”