Structure and electronic properties of epitaxial graphene grown on SiC

We review progress in developing epitaxial graphene as a material for carbon electronics. In particular, improvements in epitaxial graphene growth, interface control and the understanding of multilayer epitaxial graphenes electronic properties are discussed. Although graphene grown on both polar faces of SiC is addressed, our discussions will focus on graphene grown on the (000-1) C-face of SiC. The unique properties of C-face multilayer epitaxial graphene have become apparent. These films behave electronically like a stack of nearly independent graphene sheets rather than a thin Bernal-stacked graphite sample. The origin of multilayer graphenes electronic behavior is its unique highly-ordered stacking of non-Bernal rotated graphene planes. While these rotations do not significantly affect the inter-layer interactions, they do break the stacking symmetry of graphite. It is this broken symmetry that causes each sheet to behave like an isolated graphene plane.

First direct observation of a nearly ideal graphene band structure

Angle-resolved photoemission and X-ray diffraction experiments show that multilayer epitaxial graphene grown on the SiC(000-1) surface is a new form of carbon that is composed of effectively isolated graphene sheets. The unique rotational stacking of these films cause adjacent graphene layers to electronically decouple leading to a set of nearly independent linearly dispersing bands (Dirac cones) at the graphene K-point. Each cone corresponds to an individual macro-scale graphene sheet in a multilayer stack where AB-stacked sheets can be considered as low density faults.