The distribution of wrinkles and their effects on the oxidation resistance of chemical vapor deposition graphene

We present here a detailed study of the oxidation resistance of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene. The results reveal that CVD graphene shows an excellent performance as a passivation layer below 200 °C, but the protection ability degenerates rapidly with increasing the air temperature. Our work demonstrates for the first time that the most adverse effect on the degeneration of oxidation resistance in high temperature air comes from wrinkles but not others, such as Cu grain boundaries, periodic surface depressions due to Cu surface reconstruction induced by the graphene overlay, graphene domain boundaries, which are always believed the primary factor for inferior quality of the CVD graphene at present. In addition, we found that the distribution of the wrinkles in CVD graphene depended on the Cu crystal structure, and the results of the Electron-backscatter diffraction indicate that the folded wrinkles always appear on Cu (0 0 1) facets, while the standing collapsed wrinkles appear more easily on the Cu (1 1 1) facets.