High quality monolayer graphene synthesized by resistive heating cold wall chemical vapour deposition

TL;DR

This paper presents a rapid, cost-effective cold wall CVD method for synthesizing high-quality monolayer graphene, enabling flexible electronics like transparent touch sensors with comparable quality to traditional methods.

Contribution

The authors introduce a cold wall CVD process that is 100 times faster and 99% cheaper than hot-wall CVD, producing graphene of similar quality.

Findings

Graphene quality comparable to natural graphene.

Significantly reduced production time and costs.

Successful demonstration of a flexible graphene touch sensor.

Abstract

Emerging flexible and wearable technologies such as healthcare electronics and energy-harvest devices could be transformed by the unique properties of graphene. The vision for a graphene-driven industrial revolution is motivating intensive research on the synthesis of (1) high quality and (2) low cost graphene. Hot-wall chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is one of the most competitive growth methods, but its long processing times are incompatible with production lines. Here we demonstrate the growth of high quality monolayer graphene using a technique that is 100 times faster than standard hot-wall CVD, resulting in 99% reduction in production costs. A thorough complementary study of Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and electrical magneto-transport measurements shows that our cold wall CVD-grown graphene is of comparable quality to that of natural graphene. Finally, we demonstrate the first transparent and flexible graphene capacitive touch-sensor that could enable the development of artificial skin for robots.