Low Temperature Growth of Graphene on Glass by Carbon-Enclosed Chemical Vapor Deposition Process and Its Application as Transparent Electrode

A novel carbon-enclosed chemical vapor deposition (CE-CVD) to grow high quality monolayer graphene on Cu substrate at a low temperature of 500 °C was demonstrated. The quality of the grown graphene was investigated by Raman spectra, and the detailed growth mechanism of high quality graphene by the CE-CVD process was investigated in detail. In addition to growth of high quality monolayer graphene, a transparent hybrid few-layer graphene/CuNi mesh electrode directly synthesized by the CE-CVD process on a conventional glass substrate at the temperature of 500 °C was demonstrated, showing excellent electrical properties (∼5 Ω/□ @ 93.5% transparency) and ready to be used for optical applications without further transfer process. The few-layer graphene/CuNi mesh electrode shows no electrical degradation even after 2 h annealing in pure oxygen at an elevated temperature of ∼300 °C. Furthermore, the few-layer graphene/CuNi mesh electrode delivers an excellent corrosion resistance in highly corrosive solutions such as electroplating process and achieves a good nucleation rate for the deposited film. Findings suggest that the low temperature few-layer graphene/CuNi mesh electrode synthesized by the CE-CVD process is an excellent candidate to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) as transparent conductive material (TCM) in the next generation.