Abstract
The development of ultrathin barrier films is vital to the advanced semiconductor industry. Graphene appears to hold promise as a protective coating; however, the polycrystalline and defective nature of engineered graphene hinders its practical applications. Here, we investigate the oxidation behavior of graphene-coated Cu foils at intrinsic graphene defects of different origins. Macro-scale information regarding the spatial distribution and oxidation resistance of various graphene defects is readily obtained using optical and electron microscopies after the hot-plate annealing. The controlled oxidation experiments reveal that the degree of structural deficiency is strongly dependent on the origins of the structural defects, the crystallographic orientations of the underlying Cu grains, the growth conditions of graphene, and the kinetics of the graphene growth. The obtained experimental and theoretical results show that oxygen radicals, decomposed from water molecules in ambient air, are effectively inverted at Stone-Wales defects into the graphene/Cu interface with the assistance of facilitators.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1549 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2017 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge supports from research fund of the UNIST (Grant No. 1.170093.01) and from the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korean government through the Bio & Medical Technology Development Program (Grant No. 2012M3A9C6049797) and through the Midcareer Researcher Program (Grants Nos. 2013R1A2A2A04015946, 2014R1A2A2A09052374 and 2015R1A2A2A01006992) and through the ICT R&D Program (Grant No. R0190-15-2012) of Institute for Information communications Technology Promotion (IITP). We specially thank the reviewers who raised valuable comments resulting in the improvement of our research. We also acknowledge with gratitude the PLSI supercomputing resources of the KISTI and the UNIST Supercomputing Center. This work has benefited from the use of the facilities at UNIST Central Research Facilities.