Duan Research Group

Hetero-integrated Nanostructures and Nanodevices

Publications

High-yield chemical vapor deposition growth of high-quality large-area AB-stacked bilayer graphene

L. Liu, H. Zhou, R. Cheng, W.J. Yu, Y. Liu, Y. Chen, J. Shaw, X. Zhong, Y. Huang, X. Duan

ACS Nano 6, 8241-8249 (2012)

Bernal-stacked (AB-stacked) bilayer graphene is of significant interest for functional electronic and photonic devices due to the feasibility to continuously tune its band gap with a vertical electric field. Mechanical exfoliation can be used to produce AB-stacked bilayer graphene flakes but typically with the sizes limited to a few micrometers. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been recently explored for the synthesis of bilayer graphene but usually with limited coverage and a mixture of AB- and randomly stacked structures. Herein we report a rational approach to produce large-area high-quality AB-stacked bilayer graphene. We show that the self-limiting effect of graphene growth on Cu foil can be broken by using a high H2/CH4 ratio in a low-pressure CVD process to enable the continued growth of bilayer graphene. A high-temperature and low-pressure nucleation step is found to be critical for the formation of bilayer graphene nuclei with high AB stacking ratio. A rational design of a two-step CVD process is developed for the growth of bilayer graphene with high AB stacking ratio (up to 90%) and high coverage (up to 99%). The electrical transport studies demonstrate that devices made of the as-grown bilayer graphene exhibit typical characteristics of AB-stacked bilayer graphene with the highest carrier mobility exceeding 4000 cm2/V·s at room temperature, comparable to that of the exfoliated bilayer graphene.
UCLA, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
607 Charles E. Young Drive East, Box 951569
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569
E-mail: xduan@chem.ucla.edu