CVD Process Design for 2-D Material Synthesis: Best Practices and Reporting Guidelines

Though Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) is a versatile process that has been widely used for synthesizing graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (h BN) and other 2-D materials, the process is plagued by repeatability and reproducibility issues as the growth environment inside the reactor remains virtually unknown. The problem is compounded by the fact that experimental details currently reported in the literature are insufficient to ensure reproducibility, with process details typically reported only partially, and details about the reactor not included at all. In this paper, using the example of the CVD synthesis of graphene in a hot-wall tube reactor, and, with the help of the Computational Fluid Dynamics toolbox OpenFOAM, we have simulated this growth environment and studied its sensitivity to different reactor and process parameters. Based on our findings, we have devised a protocol for reporting CVD processes in literature so that they may be completely reproducible in the future.