Development of process to transfer large areas of LPCVD graphene from copper foil to a porous support substrate

Abstract

In this thesis, I present a procedure by which to transfer greater than 25 mm² areas of high-quality graphene synthesized via low-pressure chemical vapor deposition from copper foil to porous support substrates. Large-area, high quality graphene on a porous support would serve as a platform by which to create high efficiency porous graphene membranes for use in liquid and gas-phase separation technologies. In this procedure, we transfer greater than 25 mm² areas of graphene with few holes and tears to both gold Quantifoil Holey Carbon transmission electron microscope grids with 1.2 [mu]m diameter pores and to Sterlitech polycarbonate track etch membranes with 200 nm diameter pores by bonding the substrates to the graphene then wet-etching the copper. The resulting membrane quality is characterized via Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, diffraction patterning, and aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy.