Today, CMOS compatible routes to grow and transfer large graphene sheets are still missing. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the main synthesis technique yielding high-quality wafer-scale graphene. Platinum is expected to be an excellent catalyst to grow monolayer, large scale and high-quality graphene. Moreover, electrochemical graphene transfer methods are demonstrated, which facilitate the reusability of this expensive Pt template.

A process window is studied to grow graphene on platinum foils. The influence of growth temperature and time as well as the methane to hydrogen ratio is optimized. Moreover CO₂ can be used as a graphene defect etching gas to replace hydrogen, resulting in successful graphene syntheses conditions.

It is shown that the polycrystalline nature of the Pt foil makes it extremely difficult to grow a uniform monolayer graphene sheet. It is also demonstrated that a smooth Pt(111) thin film on sapphire (R_rms = 0.2 nm) decreases the amount of graphene nucleation centres and thus strongly reduce the graphene multilayer areas. Therefore, a Pt(111) thin film appears ideally suited to grow millimetre-sized graphene islands in reasonable time frame (< 1 hour growth time).

To promote graphene delamination from the platinum growth template, it is of prime importance that an interfacial water (IFW) layer is formed. This IFW layer serves as a pathway for charged ions to intercalate between graphene and its CVD growth substrate. It is demonstrated that only a selection of ions succeed in intercalating and thus in a successful graphene delamination. The ions that are able to intercalate are electro-active outside the electrochemical window of the used solvent.