Graphene synthesis by electromagnetic induction heating of oxygen-rich copper foils

• Published in: Diamond and related materials 2023-02, Vol.132, p.109659, Article 109659
• Main Authors: Dhaouadi, Elyes, Alimi, Wafa, Konstantakopoulou, Maria, Hinkov, Ivaylo, Abderrabba, Manef, Farhat, Samir
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Copper oxide; CVD graphene; Electromagnetic induction; Heating; Nucleation
• ISSN: 0925-9635; 1879-0062
• DOI: 10.1016/j.diamond.2022.109659

We report in this article an optimized synthesis of high-quality monolayer graphene by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using methane as carbon source. The synthesis occurs on a centimeter-sized copper substrate previously oxidized in air at 180 °C then heated by electromagnetic induction in a controlled atmosphere of argon and hydrogen in which the steady-state temperature of ∼1050 °C is reached after only ∼2 min heating from room temperature. The rapidity of the heating and cooling process highlights the advantage of using the electromagnetic induction heating method in order to achieve the synthesis of graphene. When applied to CVD, electromagnetic inductive heating only heats the metallic substrate avoiding energy losses in the reaction medium. Therefore, inductive heating has great potential for large-scale and rapid manufacturing of graphene and 2D materials. This work includes an experimental study that consists in comparing the quality of the synthesized graphene over different substrates ranging from oxygen-free copper foil to oxidized copper with the aim to reduce the defects in the graphene and also to increase the domain size. We find that copper with an oxidized surface can drastically reduce graphene nucleation density thereby increasing the graphene domain sizes. In addition, we demonstrated experimentally and by numerical simulations that the presence of a thin layer of copper oxide does not disturb the mechanism of induction heating allowing the growth of high-quality graphene films by inductive heating of copper oxides. Graphene quality was studied by Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which respectively showed very little defective monolayer graphene (ID / IG