Epitaxial Growth of Graphene and Their Applications in Devices

Due to its outstanding physical and electrical properties, graphene has become one of the hot research topics and frontiers in the fields of physics and semiconductor electronics. The physical and electrical properties of graphene were briefly introduced. A comprehensive review was presented to the current research activities concentrated on the epitaxial growth of graphene which could be the most promising strategy among the reported methods to meet the challenge for mass production of graphene with high quality. A systematical discussion was then presented to the epitaxial growth of graphene by using various substrates of SiC and metals. By the end of this article, an overview was made on the recent applications of graphene in opto/electronic devices, such as field-effect transistors, light emitting diodes, supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries. It is accepted that not only growth of graphene with sizes from nanometer to centimeter could be achieved, but also the thicknesses with monolayer to a few layers could be successfully tailored via epitaxial growth of graphene on SiC/metal substrates. It is promised that the strategy of epitaxial growth could accomplish the mass production of graphene with high quality, low cost and compatibility to the conventional electronic process, which lays the significant foundations for the applications of graphenes in devices.