Low-Temperature Chemical Vapor Deposition Growth of Graphene from Toluene on Electropolished Copper Foils

A two-step CVD route with toluene as the carbon precursor was used to grow continuous large-area monolayer graphene films on a very flat, electropolished Cu foil surface at 600 °C, lower than any temperature reported to date for growing continuous monolayer graphene. Graphene coverage is higher on the surface of electropolished Cu foil than that on the unelectropolished one under the same growth conditions. The measured hole and electron mobilities of the monolayer graphene grown at 600 °C were 811 and 190 cm²/(V·s), respectively, and the shift of the Dirac point was 18 V. The asymmetry in carrier mobilities can be attributed to extrinsic doping during the growth or transfer. The optical transmittance of graphene at 550 nm was 97.33%, confirming it was a monolayer, and the sheet resistance was ∼8.02 × 10³ Ω/□