Painted graphitic carbon films formed underneath Ni templates

Abstract

By using charcoal pencil as carbon source in the metal-catalyzed crystallization method, graphitic carbon films are demonstrated in this paper. The annealing temperature is the key issue to obtain high-quality graphitic carbon films. The mechanism of metal-catalyzed crystallization of nickel is also investigated. The investigation of fabricate graphene with metal-catalyzed crystallization of pencil carbon make it a low-cost and easy approach for large-area graphene preparation. Also observed is the graphitic carbon film underneath the Ni templates. Compared to the top layer graphene, underneath graphene has better film completeness and similar film quality. With the underneath graphene, selective graphene deposition can be easily achieved by pre-patterning the metal template. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim