Structured epitaxial graphene: growth and properties

TL;DR

This paper discusses the growth of high-quality, structured epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide, demonstrating improved nanoscale patterning and mobility, which could advance graphene's application in electronics.

Contribution

It introduces a method for growing structured epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide that overcomes edge roughness issues and enables nanoscale patterning and high mobility.

Findings

High-quality graphene ribbons and rings can be fabricated using this technique.

Progress towards high mobility graphene monolayers on silicon carbide is reported.

Structured growth improves edge smoothness and device potential.

Abstract

Graphene is generally considered to be a strong candidate to succeed silicon as an electronic material. However, to date, it actually has not yet demonstrated capabilities that exceed standard semiconducting materials. Currently demonstrated viable graphene devices are essentially limited to micron size ultrahigh frequency analog field effect transistors and quantum Hall effect devices for metrology. Nanoscopically patterned graphene tends to have disordered edges that severely reduce mobilities thereby obviating its advantage over other materials. Here we show that graphene grown on structured silicon carbide surfaces overcomes the edge roughness and promises to provide an inroad into nanoscale patterning of graphene. We show that high quality ribbons and rings can be made using this technique. We also report on progress towards high mobility graphene monolayers on silicon carbide for device applications.