Evolution of Cu Surface Morphology and its Effect on Graphene Synthesized by Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract:

Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) is generally utilized for producing large area, good quality graphene films on suitable substrates. Copper (Cu) substrate is used mainly as a substrate and catalyst during graphene synthesis process by CVD method. The purpose of the present work is to investigate the evolution of Cu surface morphology after graphene growth and its influence on grown graphene quality. In this study, graphene was grown using methane as the carbon source at temperature 1040 °C for 5 minutes. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Optical Microscopy (OM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were utilized to analyze the change of Cu surface morphology after graphene synthesis. Raman spectroscopy was used to characterize the characteristics of grown graphene. SEM and AFM results showed that copper substrate surface morphology was modified after graphene growth associated by formation of large size Cu particles located basically on the surface terraces, resulting in deposition of multilayer, very small graphene domains aligned linearly along rolling marks direction.

• Periodical: Advances in Science and Technology (Volume 95)
• Pages: 17-22
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AST.95.17
• Online since: October 2014
• Authors: Ahmed Ibrahim, A. Owais, M. Atieh, R. Karnik, Tahar Laoui*
• Keywords: AFM, Cu Surface Morphology, CVD, Graphene

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