Direct Graphene Growth on Insulator

Abstract

Fabrication of graphene devices is often hindered by incompatibility between the silicon technology and the methods of graphene growth. Exfoliation from graphite yields excellent films but is good mainly for research. Graphene grown on metal has a technological potential but requires mechanical transfer. Growth by SiC decomposition requires a temperature budget exceeding the technological limits. These issues could be circumvented by growing graphene directly on insulator, implying Van der Waals growth. During growth, the insulator acts as a support defining the growth plane. In the device, it insulates graphene from the Si substrate. We demonstrate planar growth of graphene on mica surface. This was achieved by molecular beam deposition above 600°C. High resolution Raman scans illustrate the effect of growth parameters and substrate topography on the film perfection. Ab initio calculations suggest a growth model. Data analysis highlights the competition between nucleation at surface steps and flat surface. As a proof of concept, we show the evidence of electric field effect in a transistor with a directly grown channel.

13 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Quantum ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
• Graphene Photonics and Optoelectronics
• Epitaxial graphene transistors on SiC substrates

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Mechanical properties of freely suspended atomically thin dielectric layers of mica
• Graphene growth on h-BN by Molecular Beam Epitaxy
• Graphene Grown on Ge(001) from Atomic Source
• Molecular beam growth of graphene nanocrystals on dielectric substrates
• Transfer-free fabrication of graphene transistors
• Transfer-free Grown Bilayer Graphene Transistors for Digital Applications
• Molecular beam growth of graphene on mica
• First-principles study of organically modified muscovite mica with ammonium (NH${}_4^{+}$) or methylammonium (CH${}_3$NH${}_3^{+}$) ion