Chemical Vapor Deposition Growth of Graphene Domains Across the Cu Grain Boundaries

Many aspects in the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of graphene remain unclear such as its behavior near the catalyst grain boundaries. Here we investigate the CVD growth mechanism of graphene across the Cu grain boundaries using unidirectional aligned graphene domains, which simplifies the analysis of both graphene and Cu to a large extent. We found that for a graphene domain grown across the Cu grain boundary, the domain orientation is determined by the Cu grain where the domain nucleation center is located, and the Cu grain boundary will not change the growth behavior for this graphene domain. This growth mechanism is consistent with the Cu-step-attached nucleation and edge-attachment-limited growth mechanism for H-terminated graphene domains and will provide more guidance for the synthesis of high-quality graphene with less domain boundaries.