A perspective of recent advances in PECVD-grown graphene thin films for scientific research and technological applications

The purpose of this review is to provide a perspective on some of the recent advances in applying graphene thin films, including monolayer and multilayer graphene sheets synthesized by a scalable approach based on plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), to scientific research and technologies. The technological applications present here include the use of graphene in flexible electronics, for anticorrosion of metals, and for Si-based technologies including superlubricity and optoelectronics. In the case of fundamental scientific research, we demonstrate that periodic patterns of nanoscale strain distributions in monolayer graphene can lead to local giant pseudomagnetic fields as well as global modifications to the electronic properties of monolayer graphene, including strain-induced valley Hall signals and quantized Landau levels in the absence of external magnetic fields, edge states, as well as increasing electronic correlation with increasing strain. These findings suggest new approaches towards developing emerging quantum states with tunable electronic correlation based on graphene straintronics.