CO2 Laser-Induced Growth of Epitaxial Graphene on 6H-SiC(0001)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rapid, cost-effective CO2 laser-based method for growing large-area, low-strain epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001), enabling scalable and environmentally friendly graphene fabrication without high vacuum or pre-treatment.

Contribution

The authors present a novel single-step laser-induced technique for epitaxial graphene growth that is fast, scalable, and does not require high vacuum or pre-treatment of SiC.

Findings

Uniform, low-strain graphene achieved

Method operates at low temperature and in seconds

Scalable to industrial production

Abstract

The thermal decomposition of SiC surface provides, perhaps, the most promising method for the epitaxial growth of graphene on a material useful in the electronics platform. Currently, efforts are focused on a reliable method for the growth of large-area, low-strain epitaxial graphene that is still lacking. We report here a novel method for the fast, single-step epitaxial growth of large-area homogeneous graphene film on the surface of SiC(0001) using an infrared CO2 laser (10.6 {\mu}m) as the heating source. Apart from enabling extreme heating and cooling rates, which can control the stacking order of epitaxial graphene, this method is cost-effective in that it does not necessitate SiC pre-treatment and/or high vacuum, it operates at low temperature and proceeds in the second time scale, thus providing a green solution to EG fabrication and a means to engineering graphene patterns on SiC by focused laser beams. Uniform, low-strain graphene film is demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron, secondary ion mass, and Raman spectroscopies. Scalability to industrial level of the method described here appears to be realistic, in view of the high rate of CO2-laser induced graphene growth and the lack of strict sample-environment conditions.