Kinetic studies of few-layer graphene grown by flame deposition from the perspective of gas composition and temperature

Edhuan Ismail; Fatin Bazilah Fauzi; Mohd Ambri Mohamed; Mohd Fairus Mohd Yasin; Mohd Asyadi Azam Mohd Abid; Iskandar Idris Yaacob; Muhamad Faiz Md Din; Mohd Hanafi Ani

doi:10.1039/c9ra01257e

Kinetic studies of few-layer graphene grown by flame deposition from the perspective of gas composition and temperature

RSC Adv. 2019 Jul 4;9(36):21000-21008. doi: 10.1039/c9ra01257e. eCollection 2019 Jul 1.

Authors

Edhuan Ismail¹, Fatin Bazilah Fauzi¹, Mohd Ambri Mohamed², Mohd Fairus Mohd Yasin³, Mohd Asyadi Azam Mohd Abid⁴, Iskandar Idris Yaacob¹, Muhamad Faiz Md Din⁵, Mohd Hanafi Ani¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Manufacturing and Materials, Kulliyyah of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia P. O. Box 10 50728 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia mhanafi@iium.edu.my.
² Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronic, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 43600 Bangi Malaysia.
³ High Speed Reacting Flow Laboratory (HiREF), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 81310 Johor Bahru Malaysia.
⁴ Faculty of Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) Hang Tuah Jaya, Durian Tunggal 76100 Melaka Malaysia.
⁵ Department of Electrical and Electronic, Faculty of Engineering, National Defence University of Malaysia Kem Sungai Besi Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

Abstract

Studies on depositions of chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond films have shown that flame combustion has the highest deposition rates without involving microwave plasma and direct current arc. Thus, here we report on our study of few-layer graphene grown by flame deposition. A horizontal CVD reactor was modified for the synthesis of flame deposition of few-layer graphene on a Cu substrate. It was found that graphene obtained has comparable quality to that obtained with other flame deposition setups reported in the literature as determined from Raman spectroscopy, sheet resistance, and transmission electron microscopy. Calculation of the chemical kinetics reveals a gas phase species that has a close correlation to the growth rate of graphene. This was further correlated with van't Hoff analysis of the reaction, which shows that the growth reaction has a single dominating mechanism for temperatures in the range of 400 °C to 1000 °C. Arrhenius analysis also was found to be in good agreement with this result. This study shows few-layer graphene growth proceeds through different pathways from a CVD grown graphene and also highlights flame deposition as a viable method for graphene growth.