Growing Giants: Huge Grains of Copper Promote Better Graphene Growth

To technology insiders, graphene is a certified big deal. The one-atom thick carbon-based material elicits rhapsodic descriptions as the strongest, thinnest material known. It also is light, flexible, and able to conduct electricity as well as copper. Graphene-based electronics promise advances such as faster internet speeds, cheaper solar cells, novel sensors, space suits spun from graphene yarn, and more.

Now a research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colo., may help bring graphene's promise closer to reality. While searching for an ideal growth platform for the material, investigators developed a promising new recipe for a graphene substrate: a thin film of copper with massive crystalline grains. The team's findings appear in the journal AIP Advances, which is produced by AIP Publishing.