Doping free transfer of graphene using aqueous ammonia flow

Abstract

Doping-free transfer of graphene produced by catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on copper foil, is still a technical challenge since unintentional doping of the transferred graphene layer yields an uncontrolled shift of Dirac point in graphene-based field-effect transistors (FETs). Typically, CVD graphene is released from the growth template by etching of the template, i.e. copper. During the etching process, ions adhere to the graphene layer resulting in unintentional doping. We demonstrate that washing a CVD graphene layer in an aqueous ammonia flow bath after etching copper, removes the majority of the unintentional dopants. FETs fabricated from graphene after washing in DI-water display a large scattering in Dirac bias with lowered mobility. In contrast, FETs from graphene that is washed in ammonia furnish better performance with high geometrically normalized mobility exceeding 2.4 × 10⁴ cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, balanced transport and a Dirac voltage near zero. We attribute the improved FET behavior to effective removal of the ions with a typical density of 4 × 10¹² cm⁻² from the graphene layer.