Repeated Growth and Hot Delamination of Single-Crystal Graphene: A Two-Kilometer Process-Design Assessment with hBN as a Separate Case
Large single crystals of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) remain difficult to manufacture because batch growth and transfer limit area, throughput, and quality. This Perspective asks whether an atomically thin film could instead be grown, hot-delaminated, and regrown repeatedly on a long, reusable single-crystal metal surface. No integrated process is demonstrated. Once rapid full-area growth is available, hot film removal is likely to become the rate-limiting step, whereas usable single-crystal growth area sets the material produced per cycle. Two experiments determine whether the concept merits further development: rapid, damage-free delamination at or near the growth temperature, and acceptable film growth through repeated complete growth-dwell-peel-regrowth cycles. The analysis then examines the crystalline growth surface, layer control, interface and gas chemistries, product capture, quality criteria, energy, and scale. These provisional analyses expose known requirements, define early stop criteria, and guide experiments; they cannot anticipate every coupled constraint or failure mode. Graphene is the quantitative baseline. hBN requires its own M(111), product thickness, apparatus, and scaling strategy. Pilot-scale development is justified only if the two central experiments succeed and the remaining gates can then be refined experimentally.