The rate at which graphene is used in different fields
of science
and engineering has only increased over the past decade and shows
no indication of saturating. At the same time, the most common source
of high-quality graphene is through chemical vapor deposition (CVD)
growth on copper foils with subsequent wet transfer steps that bring
environmental problems and technical challenges due to the compliance
of copper foils. To overcome these issues, thin copper films deposited
on silicon wafers have been used, but the high temperatures required
for graphene growth can cause dewetting of the copper film and consequent
challenges in obtaining uniform growth. In this work, we explore sapphire
as a substrate for the direct growth of graphene without any metal
catalyst at conventional metal CVD temperatures. First, we found that
annealing the substrate prior to growth was a crucial step to improve
the quality of graphene that can be grown directly on such substrates.
The graphene grown on annealed sapphire was uniformly bilayer and
had some of the lowest Raman D/G ratios found in the literature.
In addition, dry transfer experiments have been performed that have
provided a direct measure of the adhesion energy, strength, and range
of interactions at the sapphire/graphene interface. The adhesion
energy of graphene to sapphire is lower than that of graphene grown
on copper, but the strength of the graphene–sapphire interaction
is higher. The quality of the several centimeter scale transfer was
evaluated using Raman, SEM, and AFM as well as fracture mechanics
concepts. Based on the evaluation of the electrical characteristics
of the graphene synthesized in this work, this work has implications
for several potential electronic applications.