Tailoring the thermal and electrical transport properties of graphene films by grain size engineering

Nat Commun. 2017 Feb 16:8:14486. doi: 10.1038/ncomms14486.

Abstract

Understanding the influence of grain boundaries (GBs) on the electrical and thermal transport properties of graphene films is essentially important for electronic, optoelectronic and thermoelectric applications. Here we report a segregation-adsorption chemical vapour deposition method to grow well-stitched high-quality monolayer graphene films with a tunable uniform grain size from ∼200 nm to ∼1 μm, by using a Pt substrate with medium carbon solubility, which enables the determination of the scaling laws of thermal and electrical conductivities as a function of grain size. We found that the thermal conductivity of graphene films dramatically decreases with decreasing grain size by a small thermal boundary conductance of ∼3.8 × 109 W m-2 K-1, while the electrical conductivity slowly decreases with an extraordinarily small GB transport gap of ∼0.01 eV and resistivity of ∼0.3 kΩ μm. Moreover, the changes in both the thermal and electrical conductivities with grain size change are greater than those of typical semiconducting thermoelectric materials.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't