Silane-catalysed fast growth of large single-crystalline graphene on hexagonal boron nitride

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7499
• Publication Date: 2015-03-11T11:59:57Z
• Authors: Shujie Tang; Haomin Wang; Hui Shan Wang; Qiujuan Sun; Xiuyun Zhang; Chunxiao Cong; Hong Xie; Xiaoyu Liu; Xiaohao Zhou; Fuqiang Huang; Xiaoshuang Chen; Ting Yu; Feng Ding; Xiaoming Xie; Mianheng Jiang
• Keywords: Condensed Matter - Materials Science; 660; Quantum Hall; Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); FOS: Physical sciences; :Science::Physics [DRNTU]; 02 engineering and technology; 540; 530; 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy; DRNTU::Science::Physics; Article; Interfaces and Thin Films; 0104 chemical sciences; Surfaces; Surfaces, Interfaces and Thin Films; 0210 nano-technology

AbstractThe direct growth of high-quality, large single-crystalline domains of graphene on a dielectric substrate is of vital importance for applications in electronics and optoelectronics. Traditionally, graphene domains grown on dielectrics are typically only ~1 μm with a growth rate of ~1 nm min−1 or less, the main reason is the lack of a catalyst. Here we show that silane, serving as a gaseous catalyst, is able to boost the graphene growth rate to ~1 μm min−1, thereby promoting graphene domains up to 20 μm in size to be synthesized via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Hall measurements show that the mobility of the sample reaches 20,000 cm2 V−1 s−1 at room temperature, which is among the best for CVD-grown graphene. Combining the advantages of both catalytic CVD and the ultra-flat dielectric substrate, gaseous catalyst-assisted CVD paves the way for synthesizing high-quality graphene for device applications while avoiding the transfer process.