Direct synthesis of few- and multi-layer graphene films on dielectric substrates by "etching-precipitation" method

A novel "etching-precipitation" method is proposed and developed for the direct synthesis of graphene on dielectric substrates. In this method, graphene precipitates from the Fe-C solid solution film during selective etching of Fe using Cl-2 gas. Few-and multi-layer graphene is fabricated directly on quartz glass and SiO2/Si substrates without Fe residue at a growth temperature of 500-650 degrees C, which is a significantly lower temperature than used in the conventional chemical vapor deposition method. The 6- to 7-layer graphene synthesized at 650 degrees C shows a volume resistivity of 80-140 mu Omega cm. The average number of layers can be easily controlled in a linear fashion with the initial carbon feed, which is proportional to the thickness of the starting Fe-C films. Line-patterned multi-layer graphene is also fabricated by simply pre-patterning the starting Fe-C film although its structure is somewhat different from typical graphene ribbons. "Etching-precipitation" will be a practical route to synthesize graphene with micro-patterns directly onto device substrates of arbitrary sizes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.