High-Quality Graphene Films Synthesized by Inductively-Coupled Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Graphene has recently attracted significant attention because of its unique optical and electrical properties. For practical device applications, special attention has to be paid to the synthesis of high-quality graphene on large-area substrates. Graphene has been synthesized by eloborated mechanical exfoliation of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite, chemical reduction of exfoliated grahene oxide, thermal decomposition of silicon carbide, and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on Ni or Cu substrates. Among these techniques, CVD is superior to the others from the perspective of technological applications because of its possibility to produce a large size graphene. PECVD has been demonstrated to be successful in synthesizing various carbon nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes and nanosheets. Compared with thermal CVD, PECVD possesses a unique advantage of additional high-density reactive gas atoms and radicals, facilitating low-temperature, rapid, and controllable synthesis. In the current study, we report results in synthesizing of high-quality graphene films on a Ni films at low temperature. Controllable synthesis of quality graphene on Cu foil through inductively-coupled plasma CVD (ICPCVD), in which the surface chemistry is significantly different from that of conventional thermal CVD, was also discussed.