Semiconducting graphene from highly ordered substrate interactions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that highly ordered substrate interactions enable the epitaxial growth of semiconducting graphene with a significant bandgap, overcoming disorder-related limitations in previous methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel epitaxial growth method to produce semiconducting graphene with a bandgap greater than 0.5 eV on SiC(0001).

Findings

A bandgap >0.5 eV was measured in epitaxially grown graphene.

Ordered substrate interactions are crucial for semiconducting properties.

Epitaxial growth on SiC(0001) achieves high-quality semiconducting graphene.

Abstract

While numerous methods have been proposed to produce semiconducting graphene, a significant bandgap has never been demonstrated. The reason is that, regardless of the theoretical gap formation mechanism, disorder at the sub-nanometer scale prevents the required chiral symmetry breaking necessary to open a bandgap in graphene. In this work, we show for the first time that a 2D semiconducting graphene film can be made by epitaxial growth. Using improved growth methods, we show by direct band measurements that a bandgap greater than 0.5 eV can be produced in the first graphene layer grown on the SiC(0001) surface. This work demonstrates that order, a property that remains lacking in other graphene systems, is key to producing electronically viable semiconducting graphene.