Rapid and catalyst-free CVD growth of graphene on hBN

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a catalyst-free CVD method for growing high-quality, single-crystal graphene on h-BN with high growth rates, advancing scalable production of graphene/h-BN heterostructures.

Contribution

It introduces a catalyst-free CVD process that achieves high growth rates and single-crystal graphene on h-BN, improving control over crystallinity and scalability.

Findings

Single-crystal graphene grains with six-fold symmetry were achieved.

Growth rates up to 100 nm/min were demonstrated.

Airborne contamination affects grain orientation.

Abstract

Recently, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) has been shown to act as an ideal substrate to graphene by greatly improving the material transport properties thanks to its atomically flat surface, low interlayer electronic coupling and almost perfect reticular matching. Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is presently considered the most scalable approach to grow graphene directly on h-BN. However, for the catalyst-free approach, poor control over the shape and crystallinity of the graphene grains and low growth rates are typically reported. In this work we investigate the crystallinity of differently shaped grains and identify a path towards a real van der Waals epitaxy of graphene on h-BN by adopting a catalyst-free CVD process. We demonstrate the polycrystalline nature of circular-shaped pads and attribute the stemming of different oriented grains to airborne contamination of the h-BN flakes. We show that single-crystal grains with six-fold symmetry can be obtained by adopting high hydrogen partial pressures during growth. Notably, growth rates as high as 100 nm/min are obtained by optimizing growth temperature and pressure. The possibility of synthesizing single-crystal graphene on h-BN with appreciable growth rates by adopting a simple CVD approach is a step towards an increased accessibility of this promising van der Waals heterostructure.