This article presents a review of epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide, from fabrication to properties, put in the context of other forms of graphene.
Realizing high-performance nanoelectronics requires control of materials at the nanoscale. Methods to produce high quality epitaxial graphene (EG) nanostructures on silicon carbide are known. The next step is to grow Van der Waals semiconductors on top of EG nanostructures. Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a wide bandgap semiconductor with a honeycomb lattice structure that matches that of graphene, making it ideally suited for graphene-based nanoelectronics. Here, we describe the preparation and characterization of multilayer h-BN grown epitaxially on EG using a migration-enhanced metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy process. As a result of the lateral epitaxial deposition (LED) mechanism, the grown h-BN/EG heterostructures have highly ordered epitaxial interfaces, as desired in order to preserve the transport properties of pristine graphene. Atomic scale structural and energetic details of the observed row-by-row, growth mechanism of the 2D epitaxial h-BN film are analyzed through first-principles simulations, demonstrating one-dimensional nucleation-free-energy-barrierless growth. This industrially relevant LED process can be applied to a wide variety of van der Waals materials.
We present a technique to tune the charge density of epitaxial graphene via an electrostatic gate that is buried in the silicon carbide substrate. The result is a device in which graphene remains accessible for further manipulation or investigation. Via nitrogen or phosphor implantation into a silicon carbide wafer and subsequent graphene growth, devices can routinely be fabricated using standard semiconductor technology. We have optimized samples for room temperature as well as for cryogenic temperature operation. Depending on implantation dose and temperature we operate in two gating regimes. In the first, the gating mechanism is similar to a MOSFET, the second is based on a tuned space charge region of the silicon carbide semiconductor. We present a detailed model that describes the two gating regimes and the transition in between.
The materials science of graphene grown epitaxially on the hexagonal basal planes of SiC crystals is reviewed. We show that the growth of epitaxial graphene on Si-terminated SiC(0001) is much different than growth on the C-terminated SiC(000 -1) surface, and discuss the physical structure of these graphenes. The unique electronic structure and transport properties of each type of epitaxial graphene is described, as well as progress toward the development of epitaxial graphene devices. This materials system is rich in subtleties, and graphene grown on the two polar faces differs in important ways, but all of the salient features of ideal graphene are found in these epitaxial graphenes, and wafer-scale fabrication of multi-GHz devices already has been achieved.
We report on room temperature THz detection by means of antenna-coupled field effect transistors fabricated by using epitaxial graphene grown on silicon carbide substrate. Two independent detection mechanisms are found: plasma wave assisted-detection and thermoelectric effect, which is ascribed to the presence of junctions along the FET channel. The superposition of the calculated functional dependence of both the plasmonic and thermoelectric photovoltages on the gate bias qualitatively well reproduces the measured photovoltages. Additionally, the sign reversal of the measured photovoltage demonstrates the stronger contribution of the plasmonic detection compared to the thermoelectric mechanism. Although responsivity improvement is necessary, these results demonstrate that plasmonic detectors fabricated by epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide are potential candidates for fast large area imaging of macroscopic samples.
Replacing GaAs by graphene to realize more practical quantum Hall resistance standards (QHRS), accurate to within $10^{-9}$ in relative value, but operating at lower magnetic fields than 10 T, is an ongoing goal in metrology. To date, the required accuracy has been reported, only few times, in graphene grown on SiC by sublimation of Si, under higher magnetic fields. Here, we report on a device made of graphene grown by chemical vapour deposition on SiC which demonstrates such accuracies of the Hall resistance from 10 T up to 19 T at 1.4 K. This is explained by a quantum Hall effect with low dissipation, resulting from strongly localized bulk states at the magnetic length scale, over a wide magnetic field range. Our results show that graphene-based QHRS can replace their GaAs counterparts by operating in as-convenient cryomagnetic conditions, but over an extended magnetic field range. They rely on a promising hybrid and scalable growth method and a fabrication process achieving low-electron density devices.