Kyma Technologies, Inc. announced today the addition of crystalline copper (Cu) and graphene templates to its growing portfolio of materials products. Both of these new products are available in 2-inch, 3-inch, and 4-inch diameters and are fabricated using patented and company proprietary manufacturing technologies.

Kyma’s Cu templates (see Figure 1 left) consist of 500 nm thick (111) Cu epitaxially grown on (001) sapphire substrates. They have smooth mirror-like surfaces and excellent structural quality including good long range rotational order. Characterization results obtained from a typical Cu template are shown in Figure 2.

Kyma’s monolayer graphene templates (see Figure 1 right) consist of a single monolayer of highly crystalline graphene which is epitaxially grown on Kyma’s copper templates. Their overall high crystalline quality is evidenced by good Raman spectra (Figure 3 left). Their high degree of rotational order or inter-grain alignment can be seen in an optical micrograph of the partially coalesced edge region of a typical Kyma graphene template as shown on the right in Figure 3.

Kyma’s interest in graphene as a material of interest grew significantly in 2014 when IBM published a seminal paper entitled “Principle of direct van der Waals epitaxy of single-crystalline films on epitaxial graphene” in Nature Communications. In that paper IBM describes the growth of high quality GaN materials by MOCVD upon epitaxical graphene which remains on the SiC substrate from which it was derived. IBM was able to release the GaN film and reuse the graphene/SiC template for multiple GaN growth and transfer cycles.

Kyma viewed the IBM work as an exciting demonstration of what is possible in using graphene as a material upon which one could potentially grow a large number of different materials epitaxially with the potential to subsequently both separate the epitaxial film and reuse the graphene for additional epitaxial growths.

Kyma CTO Jacob Leach commented, “We appreciate IBM’s approach of using epitaxial graphene grown on SiC and we have experimented with that approach a bit, but our greatest success in creating large area high quality graphene layers was achieved using our newly developed process for growing graphene directly on our newly developed copper on sapphire templates.”

Kyma CEO Keith Evans added, “I am proud of what our team has achieved in this relatively new materials space for the company. Also, we are very thankful to the US Navy for supporting this R&D project, which has enabled Kyma to closely examine multiple commercial graphene sources and competing manufacturing technologies and ultimately to develop these exciting new products.”

Applications for large area crystalline graphene materials are manifold and include batteries, transparent contacts, sensors, conductive layers in 2D materials stacks, and nucleation layers for van der Waals epitaxy of other materials. Applications for large area crystalline copper materials include as a nucleation layers for graphene epitaxy and high electrical conductivity interconnects in semiconductor circuit manufacturing.

Formal Acknowledgement of Financial Support and Non-Attribution Statement

This material is based upon work supported by the Naval Sea Systems Command under Contract No. N00178-17-C-0004. This material does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Government and no official endorsement should be inferred.

About Kyma Technologies, Inc.

Kyma’s mission is to provide advanced materials solutions that promote energy efficiency. Kyma’s products include a diverse portfolio of advanced crystalline materials (including GaN, AlN, AlGaN, Ga2O3, and graphene), crystal growth tools for fabricating such materials, and GaN-based photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS) devices. Kyma's growing service offering includes specialty parts manufacturing, device processing, materials characterization, wafer fabrication, and federal contract consulting services.

To access select scientific publications which feature Kyma's technologies, click here.

For more information about Kyma, visit www.kymatech.com, send an email to info@kymatech.com, or call the company directly at +1 919.789.8880.