Tunneling Spectroscopy of Graphene-Boron Nitride Heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper investigates graphene-boron nitride heterostructures by fabricating tunnel junctions, revealing phonon effects and disorder influences on tunneling, and comparing device properties to previous scanning tunneling microscopy results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel graphene tunnel junction with hexagonal-boron nitride as a barrier, providing new insights into tunneling behavior and phonon interactions in graphene.

Findings

Identification of phonon-enhanced tunneling thresholds

Differences in device properties elucidate disorder effects

Comparison clarifies previous STM results in graphene

Abstract

We report on the fabrication and measurement of a graphene tunnel junction using hexagonal-boron nitride as a tunnel barrier between graphene and a metal gate. The tunneling behavior into graphene is altered by the interactions with phonons and the presence of disorder. We extract prop- erties of graphene and observe multiple phonon-enhanced tunneling thresholds. Finally, differences in the measured properties of two devices are used to shed light on mutually-contrasting previous results of scanning tunneling microscopy in graphene.