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Copper oxide as a “self-cleaning” substrate for graphene growth

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Abstract

Commonly used techniques for cleaning copper substrates before graphene growth via chemical vapor deposition (CVD), such as rinsing with acetone, nitric, and acetic acid, and high temperature hydrogen annealing still leave residual adventitious carbon on the copper surface. This residual carbon promotes graphene nucleation and leads to higher nucleation density. We find that copper with an oxidized surface can act as a self-cleaning substrate for graphene growth by CVD. Under vacuum conditions, copper oxide thermally decomposes, releasing oxygen from the substrate surface. The released oxygen reacts with the carbon residues on the copper surface and forms volatile carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, leaving a clean copper surface free of carbon for large-area graphene growth. Using oxidized electropolished copper foil leads to a reduction in graphene nucleation density by over a factor of 1000 when compared to using chemically cleaned oxygen free copper foil.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Carl W. Magnuson gratefully appreciates support from Sandia National Labs LDRD fellowship program. We thank the Keck Foundation (749046) and ONR (N00014-10-1-0254) for support.

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Author notes

  1. Xianghua Kong

    Present address: School of Chemical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

  2. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712, USA

    Carl W. Magnuson, Xianghua Kong, Hengxing Ji, Cheng Tan, Huifeng Li, Richard Piner & Rodney S. Ruoff

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering and CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230036, China

    Hengxing Ji

  3. College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, University at Albany-SUNY, Albany, New York, 12203, USA

    Carl A. Ventrice Jr.

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  1. Carl W. Magnuson
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Correspondence to Rodney S. Ruoff.

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Magnuson, C.W., Kong, X., Ji, H. et al. Copper oxide as a “self-cleaning” substrate for graphene growth. Journal of Materials Research 29, 403–409 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2013.388

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