Growth of Millimeter-Sized Graphene Single Crystals on Al2O3(0001)/Pt(111) Template Wafers Using Chemical Vapor Deposition

The synthesis of graphene using chemical vapor deposition on platinum surfaces is discussed. The crystalline nature of the platinum substrates as well as the graphene growth conditions play a key role to yield monolayer graphene with low defectivity. The need for template wafers with a single Pt orientation emerges due to graphene overgrowth on untextured polycrystalline Pt foils. Single-crystalline Pt foils can be obtained after long annealing steps. However, these Pt foils remain rough and are therefore less suitable during subsequent graphene transfer procedures. On the other hand, highly oriented platinum thin films avoid the overgrowth issues but result in differing nucleation phenomena on different oriented grains. An optimized graphene growth template is found in Al 2 O 3 (0001)/Pt(111), which is more than one order of magnitude flatter compared to the annealed Pt(111) foils and serves as an ideal catalyst to grow graphene grains exceeding 7 mm in diameter.