Microstructural Characteristics of ECR Plasma Etched and Heat Treated Commercial Copper Foil

Abstract The structural quality of the catalytic transition metal substrate plays a critical role in pristine graphene synthesis by chemical vapor deposition. In this work, the microstructural parameters of commercial copper foils are investigated in lieu of conventional laboratory grade crystalline copper foils. Initially, the commercial copper foils are simultaneously plasma etched and heat treated for a period of 30, 45 min, and 1 h respectively at two elevated temperature levels of 823 and 923 K under the exposure of hydrogen plasma. The experiments are carried out in a 2.45 GHz Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PE‐CVD) reactor, at an operating pressure of 5 × 10 −2 mbar. X‐ray diffraction (XRD) results are plotted and analyzed by Williamson–Hall (W–H) method to determine microstructural parameters, e.g., micro‐strain, stress, average domain size, and energy density associated to the processed copper foils.