Discontinuity and misorientation of graphene grown on nickel foil: Effect of the substrate crystallographic orientation

Graphene growth by chemical vapor deposition on low cost metal foils is a promising approach for the production of large-scale graphene. However, the precise control of the uniformity of synthesized mono- and multilayer graphene requires elucidation of the factors affecting deposition and growth. In this study, we investigate the influence of the crystallographic orientation of nickel on multilayer graphene growth using electron-backscatter diffraction, Raman and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopies, as well as scanning electron and atomic force microscopies. We correlated the discontinuities of the graphene sheets on polycrystalline nickel foils with crystallographic orientations of nickel grains. In addition, we observed indications of misoriented (twisted) multilayer graphene on particular grain orientations. We demonstrate that the Raman signature from these misoriented multilayer graphene areas is highly similar to that previously reported for twisted bilayer graphene. Using microscopy methods, we demonstrated dramatic morphological changes in the nickel substrate induced by graphene growth.