Synthesis of Monolayer Graphene Having a Negligible Amount of Wrinkles by Stress Relaxation

For the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of graphene, the grain growth of the catalyst metal and thereby surface roughening are unavoidable during the high temperature annealing for the graphene synthesis. Considering that nanoscale wrinkles and poor uniformity of synthesized graphene originate from the roughened metal surface, improving surface flatness of metal thin films is one of the key factors to synthesize high quality graphene. Here, we introduce a new method for graphene synthesis for fewer wrinkle formation on a catalyst metal. The method utilizes a reduced graphene oxide (rGO) interfacial layer between the metal film and the wafer substrate. The rGO interlayer releases the residual stress of the metal thin film and thereby suppresses stress-induced metal grain growth. This technique makes it possible to use much thinner nickel films, leading to a dramatic suppression of RMS roughness (~3 nm) of the metal surface even after high temperature annealing. It also endows excellent control of the graphene thickness due to the reduced amount of total carbon in the thin nickel film. The synthesized graphene layer having negligible amount of wrinkles exhibits excellent thickness uniformity (91% coverage of monolayer) and very high carrier mobility of ~15,000 cm(2)/V·s.