Graphene film growth on sputtered thin Cu–Ni alloy film by inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition

Graphene film growth on a Cu–Ni alloy thin film with various alloy compositions is reported in this paper. A magnetron co-sputtered thin film was applied to precisely vary the alloy composition, and graphene film was grown at conventional growth conditions by inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition. A highly uniform single-layer graphene, mostly bilayer graphene with ∼70% coverage, and mostly few-layer graphene were obtained on the Cu–Ni alloys with 8.6, 21, and 34.8 atom% Ni, respectively. The measured resistance decreased from ∼1429 Ω sq−1, to ∼756 Ω sq−1 and to ∼240 Ω sq−1, and the transmittance decreased from 97%, to 95% and to 89%, respectively, as the Ni composition increased. The film thickness of the graphene layers could be controlled by tuning the alloy composition via the co-sputtering process. But the analysis also indicates that, at the same time, the degree of disordered stacking between layers also tends to increase with increasing Ni content in the Cu–Ni film.