Rational design of a binary metal alloy for chemical vapour deposition growth of uniform single-layer graphene

Abstract

Controlled growth of high-quality graphene is still the bottleneck of practical applications. The widely used chemical vapour deposition process generally suffers from an uncontrollable carbon precipitation effect that leads to inhomogeneous growth and strong correlation to the growth conditions. Here we report the rational design of a binary metal alloy that effectively suppresses the carbon precipitation process and activates a self-limited growth mechanism for homogeneous monolayer graphene. As demonstrated by an Ni-Mo alloy, the designed binary alloy contains an active catalyst component for carbon source decomposition and graphene growth and a black hole counterpart for trapping the dissolved carbons and forming stable metal carbides. This type of process engineering has been used to grow strictly single-layer graphene with 100% surface coverage and excellent tolerance to variations in growth conditions. With simplicity, scalability and a very large growth window, the presented approach may facilitate graphene research and industrial applications. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.