SBIR Phase I: Roll-to-roll Production of Uniform Graphene Films at Atmospheric Pressure and Low Temperature

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to demonstrate technical feasibility of producing low-cost, high-quality and large-area graphene films. The approach is to grow uniform graphene films over continuous tapes of electropolished catalytic copper foil in a roll-to-roll process. This project is expected to address critical challenges that limit industrial manufacture of graphene films including, (1) the need for high vacuum and high temperature, resulting in high cost; and (2) the limitation of graphene film size by the furnace dimension. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to provide high-quality wafer-scale graphene material in industrial quantities. The technology will have advantages of cost, quality, and design flexibility over competing concepts. Large-area graphene films can be used for industrial applications including flexible, transparent electrode, Radio-Frequency electronics, Field-Effect-Transistor-based chemical sensors, near infrared detectors, as well as academic applications such as novel sample supports for ultra-high resolution transmission electron microscopy.