Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon toward Graphene-Silicon Fusion Electronics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel method for growing large-area epitaxial graphene directly on silicon substrates, potentially enabling integration of graphene with existing silicon electronics.

Contribution

It introduces the graphene-on-silicon (GOS) technique, allowing epitaxial graphene formation on silicon, overcoming previous limitations related to SiC substrate costs and integration challenges.

Findings

Successful formation of well-ordered graphene on silicon substrates.

Potential for fabricating electronic devices with graphene directly on silicon.

Addresses cost and integration issues of existing graphene growth methods.

Abstract

Graphene is a promising contender to succeed the throne of silicon in electronics. To this goal, large-scale epitaxial growth of graphene on substrates should be developed. Among various methods along this line, epitaxial growth of graphene on SiC substrates by thermal decomposition of surface layers has proved itself quite satisfactory both in quality and in process reliability. Even modulation of structural and hence electronic properties of graphene is possible by tuning the graphene/SiC interface structure. The challenges for this graphene-on-SiC technology, however, are the abdication of the well-established Si technologies and the high production cost of the SiC bulk crystals. Here, we demonstrate that formation of epitaxial graphene on silicon substrate is possible, by graphitizing epitaxial SiC thin films formed on silicon substrates. This graphene-on-silicon (GOS) method enables us to form a large-area film of well-ordered sp2 carbon networks on Si substrates and to fabricate electronic devices based on the structure.