Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is one of the best ways to scalably grow low cost, high quality graphene on metal substrates; unfortunately, it not ideal for producing graphene on dielectric substrates. Here, we demontrate production of a high quality graphene layer on Sapphire using CVD with a copper catalyst. The catalyst consists of a thin copper film grown epitaxially on α-Al2O3 (0001). After CVD growth of Graphene, the copper can be removed by simple evaporation in the presence of a carbon source (C2H4). We characterized the resulting graphene layer using Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), optical transmission and helium atom scattering (HAS). The sample exhibited a reduced Raman D peak and an excellent 2D to G ratio. AFM and HAS show large graphene domains over a macroscopic region. We measured >86% transparency over the visible spectrum.
This work has been supported by the European Union , FP7: Theme NMP.2012.1.4–3 Grant no. 309672 and by the Spanish MINECO under project MAT2015–65356–C3–3–R ( MINECO / FEDER ). D.F. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness , through the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D ( MDM–2014–0377 ).This work has been supported by the European Union, FP7: Theme NMP.2012.1.4–3 Grant no. 309672 and by the Spanish MINECO under project MAT2015–65356–C3–3–R (MINECO/FEDER). D.F. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D (MDM–2014–0377).
