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Wafer-scale epitaxial single-crystalline Ni(111) films on sapphires for graphene growth

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Abstract

The growth of graphene on Ni magnetic films is of great significance for graphene spintronics, whereas the existence of grain boundaries and twin crystal structures in Ni films is an obstacle for obtaining the large-scale and uniform graphene. In this paper, an epitaxial wafer-scale single-crystalline Ni(111) film with the flat and clean surface was successfully prepared on the commercial α-Al2O3(0001) substrate by a two-step method, which was demonstrated with several characterization methods. According to the abnormal grain growth mechanism, the clean and uniform sapphire surface plays a key role for the single crystallization of Ni films as it induces a weak interface energy difference between two atomic stacking structures (ABC and ACB), thus stimulating the evolution of Ni films from (111) out-of-plane textures to single crystals. Furthermore, an ultra-flat and wrinkle-free graphene monolayer was synthesized on the prepared Ni film, which further verified its high quality and effectiveness.

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Figure 1
Figure 2

taken from one Ni film sample and the corresponding EBSD in-plane map (b) of the same region. c–h Three typical comparisons between AFM images and XRD patterns of Ni(111) films. Top row (c–e) shows AFM images and bottom row (f–h) shows corresponding XRD patterns. (i) Relation curve between the proportion of the blue region area (RA) and that of the first set of diffraction peak intensity (RI)

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Yu Zhu, Wei Wei, Xiao Chen in Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for the helpful discussions. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62004223, 11604384, 61671460 and 51507178), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016M603000) and Open Research Fund Program of the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics (Grant No. KF202012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan, China

    Yueguo Hu, Junping Peng, Mengchun Pan, Weicheng Qiu, Ruinan Wu, Jiafei Hu, Dixiang Chen, Qi Zhang & Peisen Li

  2. Vacuum Interconnected Nanotech Workstation, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215123, Jiangsu, China

    Nan Hu, Feiyu Cheng, Rong Huang & Fangsen Li

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  1. Yueguo Hu
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Hu, Y., Peng, J., Pan, M. et al. Wafer-scale epitaxial single-crystalline Ni(111) films on sapphires for graphene growth. J Mater Sci 56, 3220–3229 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-05450-4

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