Quality assessment of graphene: Continuity,uniformity, and accuracy of mobility measurements

With the increasing availability of large-area graphene,the ability to rapidly and accurately assess the quality of the electrical properties has become critically important.For practical applications,spatial variability in carrier density and carrier mobility must be controlled and minimized.We present a simple framework for assessing the quality and homogeneity of large-area graphene devices.The field effect in both exfoliated graphene devices encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride and chemical vapor-deposited (CVD) devices was measured in dual current-voltage configurations and used to derive a single,gate-dependent effective shape factor,β,for each device.β is a sensitive indicator of spatial homogeneity that can be obtained from samples of arbitrary shape.All 50 devices investigated in this study show a variation (up to tenfold) inβ as a function of the gate bias.Finite element simulations suggest that spatial doping inhomogeneity,rather than mobility inhomogeneity,is the primary cause of the gate dependence ofβ,and that measurable variations ofβ can be caused by doping variations as small as 1010 cm-2.Our results suggest that local variations in the position of the Dirac point alter the current flow and thus the effective sample shape as a function of the gate bias.We also found that such variations lead to systematic errors in carrier mobility calculations,which can be revealed by inspecting the correspondingβ factor.     

Wafer‐Scale Synthesis of Graphene on Sapphire: Toward Fab‐Compatible Graphene

The adoption of graphene in electronics, optoelectronics, and photonics is hindered by the difficulty in obtaining high‐quality material on technologically relevant substrates, over wafer‐scale sizes, and with metal contamination levels compatible with industrial requirements. To date, the direct growth of graphene on insulating substrates has proved to be challenging, usually requiring metal‐catalysts or yielding defective graphene. In this work, a metal‐free approach implemented in commercially available reactors to obtain high‐quality monolayer graphene on c‐plane sapphire substrates via chemical vapor deposition is demonstrated. Low energy electron diffraction, low energy electron microscopy, and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements identify the Al‐rich reconstruction $\left(\sqrt{31}\times \sqrt{31}\right)R\pm 9$° of sapphire to be crucial for obtaining epitaxial graphene. Raman spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements reveal high‐quality graphene with mobilities consistently above 2000 cm² V^?1 s^?1. The process is scaled up to 4 and 6 in. wafers sizes and metal contamination levels are retrieved to be within the limits for back‐end‐of‐line integration. The growth process introduced here establishes a method for the synthesis of wafer‐scale graphene films on a technologically viable basis.