Copper acetate-facilitated transfer-free growth of high-quality graphene for hydrovoltaic generators

Jingyuan Shan; Sunmiao Fang; Wendong Wang; Wen Zhao; Rui Zhang; Bingzhi Liu; Li Lin; Bei Jiang; Haina Ci; Ruojuan Liu; Wen Wang; Xiaoqin Yang; Wenyue Guo; Mark H Rümmeli; Wanlin Guo; Jingyu Sun; Zhongfan Liu

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwab169

Copper acetate-facilitated transfer-free growth of high-quality graphene for hydrovoltaic generators

Natl Sci Rev. 2021 Sep 8;9(7):nwab169. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwab169. eCollection 2022 Jul.

Authors

Jingyuan Shan¹, Sunmiao Fang², Wendong Wang³, Wen Zhao⁴, Rui Zhang³, Bingzhi Liu⁵, Li Lin³, Bei Jiang¹, Haina Ci⁵, Ruojuan Liu¹, Wen Wang⁶, Xiaoqin Yang⁵, Wenyue Guo⁴, Mark H Rümmeli⁵, Wanlin Guo², Jingyu Sun⁵, Zhongfan Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Center for Nanochemistry (CNC), Beijing Science and Engineering Center for Nanocarbons, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² Key Laboratory for Intelligent Nano Materials and Devices of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Institute of Nanoscience, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China.
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China.
⁵ College of Energy, Soochow Institute for Energy and Materials Innovations (SIEMIS), Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory for Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China.
⁶ Beijing Graphene Institute (BGI), Beijing 100095, China.

Abstract

Direct synthesis of high-quality graphene on dielectric substrates without a transfer process is of vital importance for a variety of applications. Current strategies for boosting high-quality graphene growth, such as remote metal catalyzation, are limited by poor performance with respect to the release of metal catalysts and hence suffer from a problem with metal residues. Herein, we report an effective approach that utilizes a metal-containing species, copper acetate, to continuously supply copper clusters in a gaseous form to aid transfer-free growth of graphene over a wafer scale. The thus-derived graphene films were found to show reduced multilayer density and improved electrical performance and exhibited a carrier mobility of 8500 cm² V^-1 s^-1. Furthermore, droplet-based hydrovoltaic electricity generator devices based on directly grown graphene were found to exhibit robust voltage output and long cyclic stability, in stark contrast to their counterparts based on transferred graphene, demonstrating the potential for emerging energy harvesting applications. The work presented here offers a promising solution to organize the metal catalytic booster toward transfer-free synthesis of high-quality graphene and enable smart energy generation.

Keywords: chemical vapor deposition; copper acetate; graphene; hydrovoltaic electricity generator; transfer-free growth.