Wafer scale growth and characterization of edge specific graphene nanoribbons

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable method for growing high-quality graphene nanoribbons on SiC wafers, with detailed structural and transport characterization, advancing their potential use in nanoelectronics.

Contribution

A novel scalable technique for wafer-scale growth of high-quality edge-specific graphene nanoribbons on SiC substrates is introduced and characterized.

Findings

Successful growth of GNRs along multiple crystallographic directions

High-quality GNRs confirmed by STM, LEEM, and transport measurements

Potential for use in advanced nanoelectronic devices

Abstract

One of the ways to use graphene in field effect transistors is to introduce a band gap by quantum confinement effect [1]. That is why narrow graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with width less than 50nm are considered to be essential components in future graphene electronics. The growth of graphene on sidewalls of SiC(0001) mesa structures using scalable photolithography was shown to produce high quality GNR with excellent transport properties [2-7]. Such epitaxial graphene nanoribbons are very important in fundamental science but if GNR are supposed to be used in advanced nanoelectronics, high quality thin (<50nm) nanoribbons should be produced on a large (wafer) scale. Here we present a technique for scalable template growth of high quality GNR on Si-face of SiC(0001) and provide detailed structural information along with transport properties. We succeeded to grow GNR along both [1-100] and [11-20] crystallographic directions. The quality of the grown nanoribbons was confirmed by comprehensive characterization with high resolution STM, dark field LEEM and transport measurements.