Contamination-free graphene transfer from Cu-foil and cu-thin-film/sapphire

Abstract

The separation of graphene grown on metallic catalyst by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is essential for device applications. The transfer techniques of graphene from metallic catalyst to target substrate usually use the chemical etching method to dissolve the metallic catalyst. However, this causes not only high material cost but also environmental contamination in large-scale fabrication. We report a bubble transfer method to transfer graphene films to arbitrary substrate, which is nondestructive to both the graphene and the metallic catalyst. In addition, we report a type of metallic catalyst, which is 700 nm of Cu on sapphire substrate, which is hard enough to endure against any procedure in graphene growth and transfer. With the Cr adhesion layer between sapphire and Cu film, electrochemically delaminated graphene shows great quality during several growth cycles. The electrochemical bubble transfer method can offer high cost efficiency, little contamination and environmental advantages.