Direct growth of nanographene films by surface wave plasma chemical vapor deposition and their application in photovoltaic devices

Here, we report direct synthesis of nanographene films on silicon (n-Si) and glass (SiO2) substrates by microwave assisted surface wave plasma (MW-SWP) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and their application in photovoltaic devices. The technique is a metal catalyst free, rapid growth process and the film can be deposited on different substrates; thus simplifying the synthesis process for various device applications. The directly grown graphene film consists of triangular shaped nanographene domains with sizes of 80-100 nm in length. The nanographene domains interconnect to form a continuous film which shows metallic characteristics. A Schottky junction based photovoltaic device is fabricated with directly grown nanographene film on n-Si and a conversion efficiency of 2.1% is achieved. This finding shows that a transparent nanographene film can be deposited on different substrates and can be integrated for various devices.