Direct growth of graphene nanoribbons for large-scale device fabrication

Graphene being a zero band gap material hinders the use of its intrinsic form for many applications requiring a moderate band gap, such as field effect transistors and optoelectronic devices. Here we demonstrate a scalable method based on chemical vapor deposition for the direct growth of well-registered graphene nanoribbons on SiO(2) substrates with precise control over their width, length, and position. The width of the graphene nanoribbons (∼20 nm) is defined by the thickness of catalyst film, therefore avoiding the diffraction limit of conventional optical lithographic methods. The carrier mobility (over 1000 cm(2)/V·s) is higher than those previously reported graphene nanoribbons fabricated on SiO(2) substrates, thanks to the present transfer-free and contaminant-free direct growth process. This method overcomes many practical limitations of the previously demonstrated methods for the patterning of graphene nanoribbons and is compatible with large-scale fabrication of graphene nanoelectronics.