グラフェンの結晶成長のふく射光によるその場顕微観察

In-situ microscopic observation of crystal growth of graphene using thermal radiation

寺澤 知潮   ; 斉木 幸一朗*; 保田 諭   ; 朝岡 秀人  

Terasawa, Tomoo; Saiki, Koichiro*; Yasuda, Satoshi; Asaoka, Hidehito

炭素六員環格子からなる単原子厚のシートであるグラフェンはその高いキャリア移動度から次世代半導体として有望である。グラフェンは広い波長領域に渡って一層あたり2.3%の吸収率を示し、同等の放射率が期待される。本研究では光学顕微鏡によってグラフェンとCu基板のふく射光コントラストを得た。グラフェンの化学気相成長過程の解析から成長の律速段階を炭素のグラフェン格子への取り込みの過程であると決定した。本研究はふく射光コントラストのその場顕微観察が単原子厚の物質の結晶成長の解析に有効であることを示した。

Graphene, monolayer graphite, has been expected as one of the new materials targeting the next generation electronics since its first isolation in 2004, due to the ultrahigh carrier mobility up to 100,000 cm/Vs and high transparency of 97.7%. The high transparency of graphene make it invisible on various substrates. Particularly, graphene on Cu, one of the common growth substrates for high-quality graphene, cannot be observed by optical microscopes. Here, we report the optical microscopic method to visualize graphene using thermal radiation. We observed a Cu surface by a zoom-lens and a CMOS camera during the growth of graphene by chemical vapor deposition. When graphene was grown on Cu substrates, the thermal radiation intensity increased at the area covered with graphene. The thermal radiation contrast between Cu surfaces with and without graphene showed that the thermal radiation intensity increased as the number of graphene layers in a layer-by-layer manner. We quantitatively analyzed the thermal radiation contrasts at various temperatures. We found the thermal radiation contrast was independent from the sample temperature. This result suggests that the emissivity of graphene is independent from the temperature, which is consistent with the theory of the optical properties of graphene. Our findings are essential for the discussion of the thermal radiation from the atomically thin materials including graphene.