Highly-ordered graphene for two dimensional electronics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that graphene grown on the C-terminated face of SiC via sublimation in ultrahigh vacuum yields higher quality, larger domain size, and less substrate disorder compared to the Si-terminated face, advancing two-dimensional electronics.

Contribution

It reveals that C-face SiC produces superior graphene with larger domains and less disorder, improving growth quality for electronic applications.

Findings

Graphene on C-face has over three times larger domains.

Reduced substrate disorder on C-face compared to Si-face.

Higher quality graphene achieved through sublimation on C-face.

Abstract

With expanding interest in graphene-based electronics, it is crucial that high quality graphene films be grown. Sublimation of Si from the 4H-SiC(0001) Si-terminated) surface in ultrahigh vacuum is a demonstrated method to produce epitaxial graphene sheets on a semiconductor. In this paper we show that graphene grown from the SiC$(000\bar{1})$ (C-terminated) surface are of higher quality than those previously grown on SiC(0001). Graphene grown on the C-face can have structural domain sizes more than three times larger than those grown on the Si-face while at the same time reducing SiC substrate disorder from sublimation by an order of magnitude.