Graphene has great potential to be used as a building block for a wide range of applications from nanoelectronics to biosensing and high-frequency applications due to its unique properties. In many device applications, it is required to deposit dielectric materials on graphene at high temperatures and in oxygen ambient. However, it has been proved highly challenging as these conditions cause large degradation in graphene.

In this work, we focus on oxides and investigate the degradation of graphene in common growth conditions by annealing various graphene samples under an oxygen atmosphere at various temperatures. We explore possible protection mechanisms to enable higher temperature growth of oxides on graphene. We show that coating graphene with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) before high-temperature deposition can significantly reduce the damage induced during the growth. Furthermore, the graphene sample treated by HMDS displayed a weaker doping effect due to weak interaction with oxygen species than bare graphene and exhibited a much slower rate of electrical degradation during annealing.  This approach can enable the deposition of metal oxide materials on graphene at high temperatures without compromising the graphene quality and electrical properties which are critical in a wide range of device applications.