Relevance of C/O ratios in the gas-phase synthesis of freestanding few-layer graphene

•Different oxygen carriers are studied for the microwave-plasma synthesis of graphene.•O2 and N2O perform well in directing carbon growth towards graphene.•CO2 is not as active as N2O or O2.•CO2 performance might be explained by its plasma dissociation products (C2).•Type of oxygen carrier needs to be considered for the graphene synthesis. In microwave-plasma synthesis of few-layer graphene from hydrocarbon precursors, the carbon-to-oxygen and the carbon-to-hydrogen ratios are known to influence the product ratio of graphene to amorphous soot-like particles. While the role of oxygenated hydrocarbons and water as oxygen-supplying species has been studied before, in this paper, we compare the effect of carbon dioxide, molecular oxygen, and nitrous oxide mixed with ethylene to systematically change the C/O ratio while keeping the hydrogen supply constant. Ex situ powder analysis, emission spectroscopy, gas chromatography, and simple reaction kinetics simulations are employed to evaluate and describe the synthesis process. Additionally, thermophoretically sampled nanomaterials are collected close after the first particle inception and analyzed ex situ. The results show that molecular oxygen and nitrous oxide increase the graphene fraction with decreasing C/O ratios and pure graphene is reached at 2:1.5. The decrease in C/O ratio results in an overall decrease in solid carbon yield. With carbon dioxide, pure graphene cannot be generated at a C/O ration of 2:1.5, although a similar reduction of the particle yield is observed. Thermophoretic sampling showed that the specific mixture of carbon allotropes is already defined a few cm downstream to the plasma zone. Emission spectroscopy shows that carbon dioxide forms carbon species during its decomposition in the plasma, we hypothesize that these released carbon species might influence the environment for local nucleation of solid carbon. Thus, the C/O ratio and available carbon fraction for growth cannot always be used to tailor the carbon microstructure. Moreover, the source of oxygen atoms also seems to have an effect on the resultant microstructure.