Síntese de grafeno pelo método CVD

Abstract

The advancement and improvement of synthesis techniques and handling of materials are fundamental to understand their properties and possible forms of production and use. However, in the case of nanomaterials, problems such as structural defects, high cost and difficulty of achieving production on a large scale have yet to be solved. Inserted in this panorama is graphene, a two-dimensional nanomaterial whose morphology, consisting of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal form, is responsible for unprecedented properties that have revolutionary relevance for both basic and applied research. There are different methods of synthesis of graphene. The method of Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) is among the most advantageous ones. This method consists in breaking the bonds of the molecules of a gas subjected to high temperatures so that the atoms from the gas are deposited on a given substrate. In this work, we used the CVD method for the synthesis of graphene on oxidized silicon substrates (Si/SiO2) coated with a 500 nm thick film of nickel (Ni), which served as the catalyst. Methane gas (CH4) was used as the source of the carbon atoms and the synthesis was carried out using different sets of parameters. Experiments were performed, firstly, using parameters es-tablished in the literature and the results were compared with those obtained by other authors. The influence of the synthesis parameters and the characteristics of the films of Ni catalysts on the properties of the graphene films was studied. The samples were characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy, Confocal Raman and Optical Microscopy, and Atomic Force Microscopy. In agreement with results from the literature, it could be observed that thin films are synthesized and they are composed of graphitic flakes with a non-uniform thickness, which is strongly dependent of the morphology of catalyst film. Larger regions with characteristic Raman spectra of monolayer and few layer graphene could be obtained by combining thermal treatment of Ni film during the sputtering process with low gas flow and time of exposure to CH4 in the CVD experiment. Variations in the Raman spectra of the flakes could be observed, including the emergence of the D-band and the displacement of the peaks. These variations, which reveal the influence of substrates on the synthesized films, were more intense the smaller the number of graphene layers. Next, we combined methods reported in the literature for estimating the number of layers on the basis of the characteristics of the Raman spectra with AFM analysis to obtain the thickness of the graphene layer. The results obtained from our analysis show that monolayer graphene could be successfully synthesized in the experiments.