Step-edge instability during epitaxial growth of graphene from SiC(0001)

Abstract

The unique electronic properties of graphene offer the possibility that it could replace silicon when microelectronics evolves to nanoelectronics. Graphene grown epitaxially on silicon carbide is particularly attractive in this regard because SiC is itself a useful semiconductor and, by suitable manipulation of the growth conditions, epitaxial films can be produced that exhibit all the transport properties of ideal, two-dimensional graphene desired for device applications. Nevertheless, there is little or no understanding of the actual kinetics of growth, which is likely to be required for future process control. As a step in this direction, we propose a local heat release mechanism to explain finger-like structures observed when graphene is grown by step flow decomposition of SiC(0001). Using a continuum equation of motion for the shape evolution of a moving step, a linear stability analysis predicts whether a shape perturbation of a straight moving step grows or decays as a function of growth temperature, the background pressure of Si maintained during growth, and the effectiveness of an inert buffer gas to retard the escape of Si atoms from the crystal surface. The theory gives semi-quantitative agreement with experiment for the characteristic separation between fingers observed when graphene is grown in a low-pressure induction furnace or under ultrahigh vacuum conditions.

4 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Approaching the Dirac point in high mobility multi-layer epitaxial graphene
• Ab initio Study of Graphene on SiC
• Highly-ordered graphene for two dimensional electronics
• Step bunching of vicinal 6H-SiC{0001} surfaces

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Growth of Epitaxial Graphene: Theory and Experiment
• Role of structure of C-terminated 4H-SiC(000) surface in growth of graphene layers - transmission electron microscopy and density functional theory studies
• Tailoring the SiC surface - a morphology study on the epitaxial growth of graphene and its buffer layer
• Growth of Large Domain Epitaxial Graphene on the C-Face of SiC
• Atomistic mechanism of graphene growth on SiC substrate: Large-scale molecular dynamics simulation based on a new charge-transfer bond-order type potential
• Epitaxial electrical contact to graphene on SiC
• Single-crystal graphene on Ir(110)