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Updated: Mar 26, 2026
Fabrication of Gate-tunable Graphene Devices for Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Studies with Coulomb Impurities
Published on: July 24, 2015
Edge morphology evolution of graphene domains during chemical vapor deposition cooling revealed through hydrogen
Haoran Zhang1, Yanhui Zhang2, Yaqian Zhang1
1State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 865 Changning Road, Shanghai 200050, China. ghyu@mail.sim.ac.cn and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
Abstract:
During cooling, considerable changes such as wrinkle formation and edge passivation occur in graphene synthesized on the Cu substrate. Wrinkle formation is caused by the difference in the thermal expansion coefficients of graphene and its substrate. This work emphasizes the cooling-induced edge passivation. The graphene-edge passivation can limit the regrowth of graphene at the domain edge. Our work shows that silicon-containing particles tend to accumulate at the graphene edge, and the formation of these particles is related to cooling. Furthermore, a clear curvature can be observed at the graphene edge on the Cu substrate, indicating the sinking of the graphene edge into the Cu substrate. Both the sinking of the graphene edge and the accumulation of silicon-containing particles are responsible for edge passivation. In addition, two kinds of graphene edge morphologies are observed after etching, which were explained by different etching mechanisms that illustrate the changes of the graphene edge during cooling.
