Laser Controllable Growth of Graphene via Ni-Cu Alloy Composition Modulation

Abstract

Graphene has many unique properties, most of them strongly depend on the number of layers. It is significant to develop a facile approach to realize the controllable growth of graphene with specific number of layers. We ever reported an efficient approach to grow graphene rapidly and locally by laser irradiation. In this work, we offers yet another important feature, to control the number of layers of graphene. Ni-Cu alloy has been reported to be used successfully as the catalyst for graphene growth with controllable number of layers. In that case, the Ni-Cu alloys with different compositions were normally formed by thermal evaporation. Here we provide an efficient way to fabricate the Ni-Cu alloy catalysts by laser cladding. Then the high power laser was employed to melt the Ni and Cu mixed powders. Different Ni-Cu alloy catalysts were formed in a high rate of 720 mm 2 /min with a thickness of 1.2 mm. Then the graphene with controllable layers was rapidly and locally grown on the Ni-Cu catalysts by laser irradiation at a high rate (18 cm 2 /min) at room temperature. We found that the Ni-Cu catalyst with 15 % Cu could be helpful to grow single layer graphene, which occupied 92.4 % of the entire film. Higher Cu content didn't promote the growth due to the oxygen involved during the growth process. The controllable growth mechanism of graphene by laser processing was discussed. Combining the rapid catalyst fabrication and graphene synthesis make it a cost-and time-efficient method to produce the controllable graphene films.

Laser Direct Writing of Heteroatom (N and S)‐Doped Graphene from a Polybenzimidazole Ink Donor on Polyethylene Terephthalate Polymer and Glass Substrates

“…[19][20][21] Solid carbon coating on Cu or Ni, instead of the use of hazard gas, was developed for graphene growth combined with laser writing. [22][23][24] The high-temperature process (typically over 1000 °C) would cause certain damages to the polymer substrates, and removal of metallic coating subsequently was an additional process either chemically or the use of laser ablation. Graphene can also be transferred from CVD growth on copper foils to a substrate surface.…”

“…Monolayer or bilayer graphene was achievable from a Ni/Cu alloy metal precursor, and deposition of graphite to them, followed by laser heating to over 1000 °C . Solid carbon coating on Cu or Ni, instead of the use of hazard gas, was developed for graphene growth combined with laser writing . The high‐temperature process (typically over 1000 °C) would cause certain damages to the polymer substrates, and removal of metallic coating subsequently was an additional process either chemically or the use of laser ablation.…”

Rapid growth of large area graphene on glass from olive oil by laser irradiation

“…Chemical vapour deposition (CVD), operated at around 1000 • C temperature, is a widely adopted technique to synthesis large-area, high quality, homogeneous crystalline graphene on metallic foils [4]. Polycrystalline nickel, copper and copper-nickel alloy are widely used as substrates for CVD production of graphene [5][6][7][8][9]. High purity gases such as CH 4 , H 2 and Ar, are commonly used Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.…”

“…However, LCVD processes suffer from low uniformity and the use of hazardous gases [15,20,21]. Solid carbon precursors such as amorphous carbon coating on Ni, Cu films or Ni/Cu alloys have been developed [9,18,19]. The graphene quality could be controlled by the thickness of carbon coating and the percentage of copper in the Ni/Cu alloy [9,18,19].…”

“…Solid carbon precursors such as amorphous carbon coating on Ni, Cu films or Ni/Cu alloys have been developed [9,18,19]. The graphene quality could be controlled by the thickness of carbon coating and the percentage of copper in the Ni/Cu alloy [9,18,19]. In addition, multilayer graphene coatings can be reduced to fewer number of layers by pulsed laser ablation or continuous CO 2 laser post processing [22,23].…”