A facile process for soak-and-peel delamination of CVD graphene from substrates using water

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, water-based soak-and-peel method for transferring CVD graphene from metal substrates, eliminating chemical etchants, reducing doping, and enabling substrate reuse for scalable, high-quality graphene production.

Contribution

The authors present a novel, chemical-free transfer technique using only hot water, improving graphene quality and process scalability compared to traditional methods.

Findings

Cleaner graphene films with less doping confirmed by Raman and electrical measurements

Reusability of substrates for multiple graphene growth cycles

Scalable process suitable for large-area graphene production

Abstract

We demonstrate a simple technique to transfer CVD-grown graphene from copper and platinum substrates using a soak-and-peel delamination technique utilizing only hot deionized water. The lack of chemical etchants results in cleaner CVD graphene films minimizing unintentional doping, as confirmed by Raman and electrical measurements. The process allows the reuse of substrates and hence can enable the use of oriented substrates for growth of higher quality graphene, and is an inherently inexpensive and scalable process for large-area production.