Conveyor CVD to High-Quality and Productivity of Large-Area Pristine and n-Doped Graphene and Its Sensing Response

The mass production of high-quality graphene is required for industrial application as a future electronic material. However, the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems previously studied for graphene production face bottlenecks in terms of quality, speed, and reproducibility. Herein, we report a novel conveyor CVD system that enables rapid graphene synthesis using liquid precursors.^[1] Pristine and nitrogen-doped graphene samples of a size comparable to a smartphone (15 cm × 5 cm) are successfully synthesized at temperatures of 900, 950, and 1000 °C using butane and pyridine, respectively. Raman spectroscopy allows optimization of the rapid-synthesis conditions to achieve uniformity and high quality. By conducting compositional analysis via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy as well as electrical characterization, it is confirmed that graphene synthesis and nitrogen doping degree can be adjusted by varying the synthesis conditions.^[2] Testing the corresponding graphene samples as gas sensor channels for NH₃ and NO₂ and evaluating their response characteristics show that the gas sensors exhibit polar characteristics in terms of gas adsorption and desorption depending on the type of gas, with contrasting characteristics depending on the presence or absence of nitrogen doping; nitrogen-doped graphene exhibits superior gas-sensing sensitivity and response speed compared with pristine graphene.<br/>[1] D. Y. Lee et al, Nano Convergence, 11, 32 (2024). “Conveyor CVD to high-quality and productivity of large-area graphene and its potentiality”<br/>[2] L. Zhao et al, Science, 333, 6045, 999-1003 (2011). “Visualizing individual nitrogen dopants in monolayer graphene”