Direct growth of graphene on gallium nitride by using chemical vapor deposition without extra catalyst

Graphene on gallium nitride (GaN) will be quite useful when the graphene is used as transparent electrodes to improve the performance of gallium nitride devices. In this work, we report the direct synthesis of graphene on GaN without an extra catalyst by chemical vapor deposition. Raman spectra indicate that the graphene films are uniform and about 5–6 layers in thickness. Meanwhile, the effects of growth temperatures on the growth of graphene films are systematically studied, of which 950 °C is found to be the optimum growth temperature. The sheet resistance of the grown graphene is 41.1 Ω/square, which is close to the lowest sheet resistance of transferred graphene reported. The mechanism of graphene growth on GaN is proposed and discussed in detail. XRD spectra and photoluminescence spectra indicate that the quality of GaN epi-layers will not be affected after the growth of graphene.