Effect of temperature on graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition Stefanos Chaitoglou 1,2 and Enric Bertran 1,2, * 1 FEMAN Group, IN2UB, Department of Applied Physics, Universitat de Barcelona, C/Martí i Franquès, 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain 2 Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (IN2UB), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Received: 9 January 2017 Accepted: 25 March 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 ABSTRACT Large-area single-crystal graphene films remain a challenge which settlement will permit to take full profit of the intrinsic properties of the material in elec- tronic application. Toward this direction, in the present work we study the effect of temperature on the chemical vapor deposition growth of graphene over copper foil, in low pressure. Graphene growth commence with the crystalliza- tion of a supersaturated fraction of carbon-adatom species, while the nucleation density is the result of competition between the mobility of the carbon-adatom species and their desorption rate. We study the nuclei size and density distri- bution, growth rate and coverage rate to calculate the nucleation activation energy. In addition, we provide information considering the control of the intrinsic strain present in the graphene domains as a result of the ripple for- mation. We study the agreement, considering the ripple formation, between the theoretical model of thermal grooving and observation made by atomic force microscopy. Introduction The most recent progress, in terms of high quality, scalability, and transferability, in graphene growth rises the expectations for the importation of graphene films in commercialized graphene-based electronic, spintronic, and optoelectronic devices in the short future [1–3]. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the most promising growth method in order to achieve large-scale films. To overcome the defects which are introduced by grain boundaries, large-area single- crystal graphene should be incorporated in devices. Till today, a careful selection of the growth conditions has enabled the growth of millimeter-sized single- crystal graphene domains [4]. However, frequently, such results arise from empirical efforts in optimizing the growing conditions [5, 6]. In previous articles, we have studied in detail the effect of parameters like the pressure and the gas mixture ratio on the growth process. We have paid high importance in underlying the dual role of hydrogen in graphene growth, as a co-catalyst and an etchant of the graphene film [7, 8], although a full understanding of the physicochemical mechanisms that govern film formation is lacking. Atomic-level phenomena such as adsorption, diffusion, Address correspondence to E-mail: ebertran@ub.edu DOI 10.1007/s10853-017-1054-1 J Mater Sci