Growth of continuous graphene by open roll-to-roll chemical vapor deposition

We demonstrate the growth of high-quality, continuous monolayer graphene on Cu foils using an open roll-to-roll (R2R) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactor with both static and moving foil growth conditions. N2 instead of Ar was used as carrier gas to reduce process cost, and the concentrations of H2 and CH4 reactants were kept below the lower explosive limit to ensure process safety for reactor ends open to ambient. The carrier mobility of graphene deposited at a Cu foil winding speed of 5 mm/min was 5270–6040 cm2 V−1 s−1 at room temperature (on 50 μm × 50 μm Hall devices). These results will enable the inline integration of graphene CVD for industrial R2R production.The authors acknowledge funding from the EC project GRAFOL, grant 285275 and EPSRC grant Graphted EP/K0166636

Field emission vacuum power switch using vertically aligned carbon nanotubes

The best field emission properties from carbon nanotube cathodes were obtained when their heights, diameters and spacings were optimized. Field emission currents as high as 10 mA were obtained from 1 cm × 1 cm vertically aligned CNT cathode with optimized parameters grown using dc plasma CVD in situ. It was found that in order to obtain large emission current of >10 mA, space charge effects within the electron beam must be taken into account

Tetrahedral amorphous carbon-silicon heterojunction band energy offsets

Non-hydrogenated tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) has shown superior field emission characteristics. The understanding of the emission mechanism has been hindered by the lack of any directly measured data on the band offsets between ta-C and Si. In this paper results from direct in situ X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements of the band-offset between ta-C and Si are reported. The measurements were carried out using a filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) deposition system attached directly to an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) XPS chamber via a load lock chamber. Repeated XPS measurements were carried out after monolayer depositions on in situ cleaned Si substrates. The total film thickness for each set of measurements was approximately 5 nm. Analysis of the data from undoped ta-C on n and p Si show the unexpected result that the conduction band barrier between Si and ta-C remains around 1.0 eV, but that the valence band barrier changes from 0.7 to 0.0 eV. The band line up derived from these barriers suggests that the Fermi level in the ta-C lies 0.3 eV above the valence band on both p and n+Si. The heterojunction barriers when ta-C is doped with nitrogen are also presented. The implications of the heterojunction energy barrier heights for field emission from ta-C are discussed