Self-doping effects in epitaxially grown graphene

TL;DR

This study investigates how the width of terraces in epitaxially grown graphene influences its electronic properties, revealing that terrace size affects doping levels, electronic structure, and quasiparticle relaxation times.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the relationship between graphene surface morphology and its electronic properties, highlighting the impact of terrace width on self-doping effects.

Findings

Terrace width significantly alters graphene's electronic structure.

Doping levels depend on the characteristic terrace width.

Quasiparticle relaxation times vary with surface morphology.

Abstract

Self-doping in graphene has been studied by examining single-layer epitaxially grown graphene samples with differing characteristic lateral terrace widths. Low energy electron microscopy was used to gain real-space information about the graphene surface morphology, which was compared with data obtained by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to study the effect of the monolayer graphene terrace width on the low energy dispersions. By altering the graphene terrace width, we report significant changes in the electronic structure and quasiparticle relaxation time of the material, in addition to a terrace width-dependent doping effect.