No Arabic abstract
We investigate the transport properties of high-quality single-layer graphene, epitaxially grown on a 6H-SiC(0001) substrate. We have measured transport properties, in particular charge carrier density, mobility, conductivity and magnetoconductance of large samples as well as submicrometer-sized Hall bars which are entirely lying on atomically flat substrate terraces. The results display high mobilities, independent of sample size and a Shubnikov-de Haas effect with a Landau level spectrum of single-layer graphene. When gated close to the Dirac point, the mobility increases substantially, and the graphene-like quantum Hall effect occurs. This proves that epitaxial graphene is ruled by the same pseudo-relativistic physics observed previously in exfoliated graphene.
The observation of the anomalous quantum Hall effect in exfoliated graphene flakes triggered an explosion of interest in graphene. It was however not observed in high quality epitaxial graphene multilayers grown on silicon carbide substrates. The quantum Hall effect is shown on epitaxial graphene monolayers that were deliberately grown over substrate steps and subjected to harsh processing procedures, demonstrating the robustness of the epitaxial graphene monolayers and the immunity of their transport properties to temperature, contamination and substrate imperfections. The mobility of the monolayer C-face sample is 19,000 cm^2/Vs. This is an important step towards the realization of epitaxial graphene based electronics.
The transport properties of epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001) at quantizing magnetic fields are investigated. Devices patterned perpendicularly to SiC terraces clearly exhibit bilayer inclusions distributed along the substrate step edges. We show that the transport properties in the quantum Hall regime are heavily affected by the presence of bilayer inclusions, and observe a significant departure from the conventional quantum Hall characteristics. A quantitative model involving enhanced inter-channel scattering mediated by the presence of bilayer inclusions is presented that successfully explains the observed symmetry properties.
We have observed the well-kown quantum Hall effect (QHE) in epitaxial graphene grown on silicon carbide (SiC) by using, for the first time, only commercial NdFeB permanent magnets at low temperature. The relatively large and homogeneous magnetic field generated by the magnets, together with the high quality of the epitaxial graphene films, enables the formation of well-developed quantum Hall states at Landau level filling factors $ u=pm 2$, commonly observed with superconducting electro-magnets. Furthermore, the chirality of the QHE edge channels can be changed by a top gate. These results demonstrate that basic QHE physics are experimentally accessible in graphene for a fraction of the price of conventional setups using superconducting magnets, which greatly increases the potential of the QHE in graphene for research and applications.
We study an epitaxial graphene monolayer with bilayer inclusions via magnetotransport measurements and scanning gate microscopy at low temperatures. We find that bilayer inclusions can be metallic or insulating depending on the initial and gated carrier density. The metallic bilayers act as equipotential shorts for edge currents, while closely spaced insulating bilayers guide the flow of electrons in the monolayer constriction, which was locally gated using a scanning gate probe.
The quantum Hall effect, with a Berrys phase of $pi$ is demonstrated here on a single graphene layer grown on the C-face of 4H silicon carbide. The mobility is $sim$ 20,000 cm$^2$/V$cdot$s at 4 K and ~15,000 cm$^2$/V$cdot$s at 300 K despite contamination and substrate steps. This is comparable to the best exfoliated graphene flakes on SiO$_2$ and an order of magnitude larger than Si-face epitaxial graphene monolayers. These and other properties indicate that C-face epitaxial graphene is a viable platform for graphene-based electronics.