Seed-Assisted Growth of Single-Crystalline Patterned Graphene Domains on Hexagonal Boron Nitride by Chemical Vapor Deposition

 

XJ Song, T Gao, YF Nie, JN Zhuang, JY Sun, DL Ma, JP Shi, YW Lin, F Ding, YF Zhang*, and ZF Liu*, Nano Lett. 2016, 16 (10), 6109–6116.

 

ABSTRACT: Vertical heterostructures based on two-dimensional layered materials, such as stacked graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (G/h-BN), have stimulated wide interest in fundamental physics, material sciences and nanoelectronics. To date, it still remains challenging to obtain high quality G/h-BN heterostructures concurrently with controlled nucleation density and thickness uniformity. In this work, with the aid of the well-defined poly(methyl methacrylate) seeds, effective control over the nucleation densities and locations of graphene domains on the predeposited h-BN monolayers was realized, leading to the formation of patterned G/h-BN arrays or continuous films. Detailed spectroscopic and morphological characterizations further confirmed that ～85.7% of such monolayer graphene domains were of single-crystalline nature with their domain sizes predetermined throughout seed interspacing. Density functional theory calculations suggested that a self-terminated growth mechanism can be applied for the related graphene growth on h-BN/Cu. In turn, asconstructed field-effect transistor arrays based on such synthesized single-crystalline G/h-BN patterning were found to be compatible with fabricating devices with nice and steady performance, hence holding great promise for the development of nextgeneration graphene-based electronics.