SUBSTRATE CLEANING APPROACHES FOR GRAPHENE SYNTHESIS

Grafen, one of the most intriguing and intensively researched materials in the field of nanotechnology in recent years, has a wide range of applications from opto-electronics to medical applications due to its such superior properties as high electrical and thermal conductivity, transparency and high strength. One of the most preferred methods in grafen synthesis is the chemical vapor deposition technique and many parameters such as gasses, substrates, substrate cleaning, temperature, growth time, annealing time, cooling rate and pressure, which are used in this technique, are effective in graphene synthesis. One of the most crucial factors that directly affects the synthesis process among these parameters is the selection of substrate and the cleaning process. In the present study, copper was used as a substrate and the impact of surface cleaning on graphene synthesis was examined in detail. Accordingly, the four different surface cleaning processes known in the literature have been applied to copper foils used in graphene synthesis and the obtained results are presented. As a result, the most effective methods to facilitate and improve the synthesis of graphene in substrate cleaning was determined to be HF and standard cleaning and single-layer homogeneous graphene synthesis was performed with these methods. However, few layered and non-homogenous graphene films were obtained with applying other cleaning approaches ahead of the growth