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Stacking domain morphology in epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide

Tobias A. de Jong, Luuk Visser, Johannes Jobst, Ruud M. Tromp, and Sense Jan van der Molen
Phys. Rev. Materials 7, 034001 – Published 17 March 2023

Abstract

Terrace-sized, single-orientation graphene can be grown on top of a carbon buffer layer on silicon carbide by thermal decomposition. Despite its homogeneous appearance, a surprisingly large variation in electron transport properties is observed. Here, we employ aberration-corrected low-energy electron microscopy to study a possible cause of this variability. We characterize the morphology of stacking domains between the graphene and the buffer layer of three different high-quality samples to capture the range of possible behavior. Similar to the case of twisted bilayer graphene, the lattice mismatch between the graphene layer and the buffer layer at the growth temperature causes a moiré pattern with domain boundaries between AB and BA stackings. We analyze this moiré pattern to characterize the relative strain and to count the number of edge dislocations. Furthermore, we show that epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide in general is close to a phase transition, causing intrinsic disorder in the form of the coexistence of anisotropic stripe domains and isotropic trigonal domains. Using adaptive geometric phase analysis, we determine the precise relative strain variation caused by these domains in different samples. We observe that the step edges of the SiC substrate influence the orientation of the domains and we discuss which aspects of the growth process influence these effects by comparing samples from different sources.

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  • Received 29 July 2022
  • Revised 30 November 2022
  • Accepted 23 December 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.7.034001

©2023 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsGeneral PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Tobias A. de Jong1,*, Luuk Visser1, Johannes Jobst1, Ruud M. Tromp2,1, and Sense Jan van der Molen1,†

  • 1Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratorium, Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 2, P.O. Box 9504, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
  • 2IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, 1101 Kitchawan Road, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA

  • *jongt@physics.leidenuniv.nl
  • molen@physics.leidenuniv.nl

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Issue

Vol. 7, Iss. 3 — March 2023

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