High-field and high-temperature magnetoresistance reveals the superconducting behaviour of the stacking faults in multilayer graphene

TL;DR

This study uncovers superconducting-like behavior in stacking faults within multilayer graphene through high-field magnetoresistance measurements, revealing potential high-temperature superconductivity in these defects.

Contribution

It introduces a method to isolate stacking fault contributions in magnetoresistance and demonstrates their superconducting behavior at high temperatures.

Findings

Stacking faults exhibit magnetoresistance similar to granular superconductors.

Superconducting critical temperature of SFs is approximately 350 K.

Method enables analysis of stacking fault contributions across temperature and magnetic field ranges.

Abstract

In spite of 40 years of experimental studies and several theoretical proposals, an overall interpretation of the complex behavior of the magnetoresistance (MR) of multilayer graphene, i.e. graphite, at high fields ($B \lesssim 70~$T) and in a broad temperature range is still lacking. Part of the complexity is due to the contribution of stacking faults (SFs), which most of thick enough multilayer graphene samples have. We propose a procedure that allows us to extract the SF contribution to the MR we have measured at 0.48~K $\leq T \leq$ 250~K and 0~T$\leq B \lesssim$ 65~T. We found that the MR behavior of part of the SFs is similar to that of granular superconductors with a superconducting critical temperature $T_c \sim $ 350~K, in agreement with recent publications. The measurements were done on a multilayer graphene TEM lamella, contacting the edges of the two-dimensional SFs.