| dc.description.abstract | Single crystal copper has attracted great interests because of its valuable surface properties that can be used to grow some materials, such as graphene and hexagonal boron nitride. However, the methods for the fabricating copper single crystals are usually complex and costly. A few recent studies have demonstrated that it is feasible to transform thin polycrystalline copper foils into large-area single crystalline foils with heat treatment methods, offering a simple and less expensive way to obtain single crystals from polycrystalline copper foils.
In this study, we obtain single-crystalline copper foils from commercial polycrystalline copper foils by heat treatment under the mixture of gas Ar/H2. Different parameters of heat treatment are tested such as thickness of Cu foils (30 μm, 50 μm, and 80 μm), duration, and temperature. After the optimization of growth condition, Cu(111) single crystal is obtained. The surface structure is characterized by Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED), Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), and Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM). Our results demonstrate that the single-crystal Cu foils can be used as substrate for highly ordered thin film for surface studies, and can be an inexpensive alternative to the Cu single crystals. | en_US |