Direct growth of low-doped graphene on Ge/Si(001) surfaces

TL;DR

This study compares CVD and MBE methods for growing low-doped graphene directly on Ge/Si(001) substrates, revealing the physical properties, growth mechanisms, and electronic behavior of the resulting graphene films.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of direct graphene growth on Ge/Si(001) using CVD, including electronic structure and growth dynamics.

Findings

Observation of massless Dirac particles in monolayer graphene

Graphene flakes are oriented along two rotated directions

Hydrogen significantly influences the growth process

Abstract

The practical difficulties to use graphene in microelectronics and optoelectronics is that the available methods to grow graphene are not easily integrated in the mainstream technologies. A growth method that could overcome at least some of these problems is chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of graphene directly on semiconducting (Si or Ge) substrates. Here we report on the comparison of the CVD and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of graphene on the technologically relevant Ge(001)/Si(001) substrate from ethene (C$_2$H$_4$) precursor and describe the physical properties of the films as well as we discuss the surface reaction and diffusion processes that may be responsible for the observed behavior. Using nano angle resolved photoemission (nanoARPES) complemented by transport studies and Raman spectroscopy, we report the direct observation of massless Dirac particles in monolayer graphene, providing a comprehensive mapping of their low-hole doped Dirac electron bands. The micrometric graphene flakes are oriented along two predominant directions rotated by $30^\circ$ with respect to each other. The growth mode is attributed to the mechanism when small graphene "molecules" nucleate on the Ge(001) surface and it is found that hydrogen plays a significant role in this process.