Towards Wafer-Scale Monocrystalline Graphene Growth and Characterization

Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has boosted numerous fundamental sciences and technological applications due to its massless Dirac particle-like linear band dispersion, that causes unprecedented physical properties. Among the various methods for synthesizing graphene, chemical vapor deposition is the most suitable approach for scalable production on a wafer scale, which is a critical step for practical applications. Graphene grain boundaries (GGBs), consisting of nonhexagonal carbon rings and therefore modulating the properties of graphene films, are inevitably formed via the merging of adjacent graphene domains with different orientations. Large-area monocrystalline graphene synthesis without forming GGBs has been challenging, let alone observing such boundaries. Here, an up-to-date review is presented of how to grow wafer-scale monocrystalline graphene without GGBs. One approach is to make single domain sizes as large as possible by reducing or passivating the number of nucleation sites. Another approach is to align graphene domains in identical orientations, and then merge them atomically. The recently developed methods for observing graphene orientation and GGBs both at the atomic and macro-scales are also presented. Finally, perspectives for future research in graphene growth are discussed.