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Chemical vapour deposition

Nature Reviews Methods Primers volume 1, Article number: 5 (2021) Cite this article

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Abstract

Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is a powerful technology for producing high-quality solid thin films and coatings. Although widely used in modern industries, it is continuously being developed as it is adapted to new materials. Today, CVD synthesis is being pushed to new heights with the precise manufacturing of both inorganic thin films of 2D materials and high-purity polymeric thin films that can be conformally deposited on various substrates. In this Primer, an overview of the CVD technique, including instrument construction, process control, material characterization and reproducibility issues, is provided. By taking graphene, 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and polymeric thin films as typical examples, the best practices for experimentation involving substrate pretreatment, high-temperature growth and post-growth processes are presented. Recent advances and scaling-up challenges are also highlighted. By analysing current limitations and optimizations, we also provide insight into possible future directions for the method, including reactor design for high-throughput and low-temperature growth of thin films.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of general elementary steps of a typical CVD process.
Fig. 2: Typical CVD equipment.
Fig. 3: Schematic of experimental processes for growing graphene.
Fig. 4: Characterization of CVD-grown graphene.
Fig. 5: Schematic of the typical components of a tube furnace used to grow MoS2 and similar TMDs.
Fig. 6: Selected examples of CVD polymer processing and applications.
Fig. 7: Advances in CVD technology for scaling-up graphene synthesis.
Fig. 8: Full R2R production of graphene films.
Fig. 9: Important factors that determine the reliability of graphene synthesis, and the corresponding electrical performance data.
Fig. 10: Concept of in situ monitoring of the as-grown CVD graphene on copper using CLSM.

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Article 01 June 2022

Hyunseok Kim, Celesta S. Chang, … Jeehwan Kim

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Acknowledgements

Z.F.L. and L.Z.S. were supported by Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS-CXTD-202001), Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (Nos. Z181100004818001 and Z191100000819005), the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2016YFA0200101) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21525310, 51432002 and 51520105003). B.H.H. acknowledges D. J. Kim, Graphene Square Inc., for the illustration in Figs 8, 9a and 10a.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Nanochemistry, Beijing Science and Engineering Center for Nanocarbons, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Luzhao Sun & Zhongfan Liu

  2. Beijing Graphene Institute, Beijing, China

    Luzhao Sun & Zhongfan Liu

  3. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Guowen Yuan & Libo Gao

  4. Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Jieun Yang & Manish Chhowalla

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Meysam Heydari Gharahcheshmeh & Karen K. Gleason

  6. Graphene Research Center, Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology, Suwon, Korea

    Yong Seok Choi & Byung Hee Hong

  7. Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Yong Seok Choi & Byung Hee Hong

  8. Graphene Square Inc., Suwon, Korea

    Yong Seok Choi & Byung Hee Hong

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  1. Luzhao Sun
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Contributions

Introduction (Z.F.L and L.Z.S); Experimentation (Z.F.L. and L.Z.S.); Results (L.B.G. and G.W.Y.); Applications (M.C., J.E.Y., K.K.G., M.H.G., B.H.H. and Y.S.C.); Reproducibility and data deposition (B.H.H. and Y.S.C.); Outlook (M.C. and J.E.Y.); Overview of Primer (Z.F.L.). All authors discussed and edited the full manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Libo Gao, Manish Chhowalla, Karen K. Gleason, Byung Hee Hong or Zhongfan Liu.

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Competing interests

K.K.G is a co-founder of GVD Corporation and DropWise Technologies. Both companies are commercializing CVD polymerization.

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Peer review information

Nature Reviews Methods Primers thanks J.H. Ahn, G. İnce, T. Kobayashi, A.N. Obraztsov, F. Stadler and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Glossary

Domain

A region of a single crystal that is delineated by grain boundaries or the edges of an isolated island.

Raman scattering

An inelastic scattering of photons by matter, by which the energy of the incident photon is changed.

Delamination

A phenomenon in which layered composites, thin films or coatings separate from the adjacent layers or the substrate due to the weakening of the bonds holding the layers together.

Half-integer quantum Hall effect

A novel Hall effect quantized into a half-integer, owing to the peculiar nature of the Landau levels spectrum with energy spacing in graphene, where the Hall conductivity can be described as \({{\rm{\sigma }}}_{xy}=4{{\rm{e}}}^{2}/h(N+\frac{1}{2})\) (where h is Planck constant and N = 0, 1, 2, …).

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Sun, L., Yuan, G., Gao, L. et al. Chemical vapour deposition. Nat Rev Methods Primers 1, 5 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-020-00005-y

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