Growth kinetics and defects of CVD graphene on Cu

Growth of high quality graphene is the basis for the successful demonstration and reduction to practice of electronic devices and transparent conductive electrodes. To date the highest quality devices have been fabricated on graphene exfoliated from natural graphite or Kish graphite, unfortunately this source of graphene is not scalable to sizes required by manufacturing processes. We used chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to grow monolayer graphite or graphene on large area Cu substrates. This technique by its nature is scalable to sizes that are compatible to almost any size requirement. We report on the improvement of the physical properties of graphene on Cu through basic understanding of the growth kinetics. We found that defects associated with the Raman D-band can be reduced by changing the growth process conditions and the sheet resistance is reduced as the D-band defects are reduced.