Oxygen Removal Key to Scalable, High-Quality Graphene Synthesis

>Graphene has been called “The wonder material of the 21st century.” Since its discovery in 2004, the material-a single layer of carbon atoms-has been touted for its host of unique properties, which include ultra-high electrical conductivity and remarkable tensile strength.

>Now, engineers at Columbia University and colleagues at the University of Montreal and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are poised to clean things up with an oxygen-free chemical vapor deposition method that can create high-quality graphene samples at scale.

>Their work, published May 29 in Nature, directly demonstrates how trace oxygen affects the growth rate of graphene and identifies the link between oxygen and graphene quality for the first time.

>In prior publications, co-authors Richard Martel and Pierre Levesque from Montreal had shown that trace amounts of oxygen can slow the growth process and even etch the graphene away.

>The quality of the OF-CVD-grown samples proved virtually identical to that of exfoliated graphene.

>From here, the team plans to develop a method to cleanly transfer their high-quality graphene from the metal growth catalyst to other functional substrates such as silicon-the final piece of the puzzle to take full advantage of this wonder material.