• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.273-278
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• 2014

On poly and single crystalline Cu substrates, the graphene was synthesized by chemical vapor deposition(CVD). Optical microscopic images which were not possible to show the detailed characterization of graphene growth were adjusted and analyzed using image analyzing software. As a result it was possible to show the detailed growth mechanism of graphene by utilizing the image analysis. Nucleation of graphene on Cu grain boundary and its growth behavior into Cu grain are shown. In addition, the movement of graphene grain boundary interacting with Cu grain boundary and pinholes during growth was illustrated in detail, and the cause and result are discussed as a result of those interactions.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.275-279
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• 2016

Chemical vapor deposited (CVD) polycrystalline graphene is widely used for various sensor application because of its extremely large surface-to-volume ratio. The electrical properties of CVD-graphene is significantly affected by the grain size and boundaries (GGBs), but evaluation of GGB of continuous monolayer graphene is difficult. Although several evaluation methods such as tunneling electron microscopy, confocal Raman, UV/ozone-oxidation are typically used, they still have issues in evaluation efficiency and accuracy. In this paper, we suggest an improved evaluation method for precise and simple GGB evaluation which is based on UV/ozone-oxidation and chemical etching process. Using this method, we could observe clear GGBs of CVD-graphene layers grown by different process conditions and statistically evaluate average grain sizes varying from $1.69{\sim}4.43{\mu}m$. This evaluation method can be used for analyzing the correlation between the electrical properties and grain size of CVD-graphene, which is essential for the development of graphene-based sensor devices.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.506-512
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• 2019

Although graphene has been successfully grown in large scale via chemical vapor deposition (CVD), it is still questionable whether the mechanical properties of CVD graphene are equivalent to those of exfoliated graphene. In addition, there has been an issue regarding how the tilt angle of the grain boundary (GB) affects the strength of graphene. We investigate the mechanical properties of CVD graphene with nanoindentation from atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Surprisingly, the samples with GB angles of 10° and 26° yielded similar fracture stresses of ~ 80 and ~ 79 GPa, respectively. Even for samples with GB exhibiting a wider range, from 0° to 30°, only a slightly wider fracture stress range (~ 50 to ~ 90 GPa) was measured, regardless of tilt angle. The results are contrary to previous studies that have reported that GBs with a larger tilt angle yield stronger graphene film. Such a lack of angle dependence of GB can be attributed to irregular and well-stitched GB structures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.329-329
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• 2016

Large-area graphene films produced by means of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) are polycrystalline and thus contain numerous grain boundaries that can greatly degrade their performance and produce inhomogeneous properties. A better grain boundary engineering in CVD graphene is essential to realize the full potential of graphene in large-scale applications. Here, we report a defect-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) for stitching grain boundaries of CVD graphene with ZnO so as to increase the connectivity between grains. In the present ALD process, ZnO with hexagonal wurtzite structure was selectively grown mainly on the defect-rich grain boundaries to produce ZnO-stitched CVD graphene with well-connected grains. For the CVD graphene film after ZnO stitching, the inter-grain mobility is notably improved with only a little change in free carrier density. We also demonstrate how ZnO-stitched CVD graphene can be successfully integrated into wafer-scale arrays of top-gated field effect transistors on 4-inch Si and polymer substrates, revealing remarkable device-to-device uniformity.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.122-127
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• 2017

Graphene grown on copper-foil substrates by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been attracting interest for sensor applications due to an extraordinary high surface-to-volume ratio and capability of large-scale device fabrication. However, CVD graphene has a polycrystalline structure and a high density of grain boundaries degrading its electrical properties. Recently, processes such as electropolishing for flattening copper substrate has been applied before growth in order to increase the grain size of graphene. In this study, we systemically analyzed the effects of the process condition of electropolishing copper foil on the quality of CVD graphene. We observed that electropolishing process can reduce surface roughness of copper foil, increase the grain size of CVD graphene, and minimize the density of double-layered graphene regions. However, excessive process time can rather increase the copper foil surface roughness and degrade the quality of CVD graphene layers. This work shows that an optimized electropolishing process on copper substrates is critical to obtain high-quality and uniformity CVD graphene which is essential for practical sensor applications.

• Composites Research
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.375-378
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• 2016

Characteristics of nanocrystalline materials are known substantially dependent on the microstructure such as grain size, crystal orientation, and grain boundary. Thus it is desired to have systematic characterization methods on the various nanomaterials with complex geometries, especially in low dimensional nature. One of the interested nanomaterials would be a pure two-dimensional material, graphene, with superior mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. In this study, mechanical properties of "polycrystalline" graphene were numerically investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. Subdomains with various sizes would be generated in the polycrystalline graphene during the fabrication such as chemical vapor deposition process. The atomic models of polycrystalline graphene were generated using Voronoi tessellation method. Stress strain curves for tensile deformation were obtained for various grain sizes (5~40 nm) and their mechanical properties were determined. It was found that, as the grain size increases, Young's modulus increases showing the reverse Hall-Petch effect. However, the fracture strain decreases in the same region, while the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) rather shows slight increasing behavior. We found that the polycrystalline graphene shows the reverse Hall-Petch effect over the simulated domain of grain size (< 40 nm).

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 2015

Dark field (DF) transmission electron microscopy image has become a popular characterization method for two-dimensional material, graphene, since it can visualize grain structure and multilayer islands, and further provide structural information such as crystal orientation relations, defects, etc. unlike other imaging tools. Here we present microstructure of graphene, particularly, using DF imaging. High-angle grain boundary formation wass observed in heat-treated chemical vapor deposition-grown graphene on the Si substrate using patch-quilted DF imaging processing, which is supposed to occur by strain around multilayer islands. Upon the crystal orientation between layers the multilayer islands were categorized into the oriented one and the twisted one, and their local structure were compared. In addition information from each diffraction spot in selected area diffraction pattern was summarized.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.38-38
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• 2010

Ever since the experimental discovery of graphene exfoiliated from the graphite flakes by Geim et at., this area has drawn a lot of attention for its possible application in IT industry. For the growth of graphene, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been widely used to fabricate the large area graphene. The lateral size of this graphene can be easily controlled by the size of the metal substrate though the chemical etching to remove this substrate is somewhat troublesome. Another problem which is hard to avoid is the folding at the grain boundary. We will discuss the origin of the folding first and introduce the way to avoid this folding. To solve this problem, we have used the various types of micro-thin metal foils. The precise control of hydro-carbon and the carrier gas results in the formation of the graphene on top of substrate. The thickness of graphene layers can be controlled with the control of gas flow on top of Cu substrate in contrast to the previously reported self-limiting growth $behavior^1$. Uniformity of this graphene layer has been checked by micro-raman spectroscopy and SEM. The size of grain can be enhanced by thermal treatment or use of other metal substrate. The dependence of grain size on the lattice size of the substrate will be discussed. By selecting the shape of substrate, we can grow various types of graphene. We will introduce the micron size graphene tube and its application.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.549-554
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• 2013

With the synthesis of graphene on Cu using CVD, it was tried to show the behavior of graphene growth depending on the size and orientation of Cu grain. It was found out that even under the same temperature and pressure the use of different gases influences on the diffusion rate of Cu. As compared to Ar gas, Cu grain growing bigger under $H_2$ and $CH_4$ was resulted in bigger graphene grain. Corrosion resistance was evaluated by potentiodynamic polarization test in room temperature and found out that the graphene on Cu was more stable in order of 10 than pure Cu due to the chemical stability of graphene. The future work of this research will focus on the synthesis of graphene having no defects including grain boundaries, and its engineering use.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.590-590
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• 2013

Direct growth of graphene using CVD method has been done on CVD grown boron nitride substrate. From the SEM image, we have shown that the size of grain of graphene could be clearly controlled by varying the amount of injected hydrocarbon. To convince the existence of graphene on boron nitride, XPS and Raman has been checked. Both B1s and N1s peaks in XPS spectra and the Raman peak around 1,370 $cm^{-1}$ demonstrated that boron nitride did remain after high temperature treatment during the graphene growth process. And along the graphene grain boundary, the Raman fingerprint of graphene was neatly appeared.