title: Isotropic Growth of Graphene toward Smoothing Stitching.
abstract: The quality of graphene grown via chemical vapor deposition still has very great disparity with its theoretical property due to the inevitable formation of grain boundaries. The design of single-crystal substrate with an anisotropic twofold symmetry for the unidirectional alignment of graphene seeds would be a promising way for eliminating the grain boundaries at the wafer scale. However, such a delicate process will be easily terminated by the obstruction of defects or impurities. Here we investigated the isotropic growth behavior of graphene single crystals via melting the growth substrate to obtain an amorphous isotropic surface, which will not offer any specific grain orientation induction or preponderant growth rate toward a certain direction in the graphene growth process. The as-obtained graphene grains are isotropically round with mixed edges that exhibit high activity. The orientation of adjacent grains can be easily self-adjusted to smoothly match each other over a liquid catalyst with facile atom delocalization due to the low rotation steric hindrance of the isotropic grains, thus achieving the smoothing stitching of the adjacent graphene. Therefore, the adverse effects of grain boundaries will be eliminated and the excellent transport performance of graphene will be more guaranteed. What is more, such an isotropic growth mode can be extended to other types of layered nanomaterials such as hexagonal boron nitride and transition metal chalcogenides for obtaining large-size intrinsic film with low defect.
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Mengqi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Lifang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Lingxiang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: IFW Dresden , Dresden 01069, Germany.
authors.forename: Rafael G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Mendes
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy Sciences , Wuhan 430071, China.
authors.forename: Zhihui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Yaxin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Liwen
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: Yanfeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shuanglin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yue
authors.affiliation: IFW Dresden , Dresden 01069, Germany.
authors.forename: Mark H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Rümmeli
authors.forename: Lianmao
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Zhongfan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Shengli
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University , Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fu
keywords: graphene; isotropic growth; liquid metal; smooth stitching