Issue 30, 2019

Revealing interfacial disorder at the growth-front of thick many-layer epitaxial graphene on SiC: a complementary neutron and X-ray scattering investigation

Abstract

Epitaxial graphene on SiC provides both an excellent source of high-quality graphene as well as an architecture to support its application. Although single-layer graphene on Si-face SiC has garnered extensive interest, many-layer graphene produced on C-face SiC could be significantly more robust for enabling applications. Little is known, however, about the structural properties related to the growth evolution at the buried interface for thick many-layer graphene. Using complementary X-ray scattering and neutron reflectivity as well as electron microscopy, we demonstrate that thick many-layer epitaxial graphene exhibits two vastly different length-scales of the buried interface roughness as a consequence of the Si sublimation that produces the graphene. Over long lateral length-scales the roughness is extremely large (hundreds of Å) and it varies proportionally to the number of graphene layers. In contrast, over much shorter lateral length-scales we observe an atomically abrupt interface with SiC terraces. Graphene near the buried interface exhibits a slightly expanded interlayer spacing (∼1%) and fluctuations of this spacing, indicating a tendency for disorder near the growth front. Nevertheless, Dirac cones are observed from the graphene while its domain size routinely reaches micron length-scales, indicating the persistence of high-quality graphene beginning just a short distance away from the buried interface. Discovering and reconciling the different length-scales of roughness by reflectivity was complicated by strong diffuse scattering and we provide a detailed discussion of how these difficulties were resolved. The insight from this analysis will be useful for other highly rough interfaces among broad classes of thin-film materials.

Graphical abstract: Revealing interfacial disorder at the growth-front of thick many-layer epitaxial graphene on SiC: a complementary neutron and X-ray scattering investigation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Apr 2019
Accepted
29 Jun 2019
First published
23 Jul 2019

Nanoscale, 2019,11, 14434-14445

Author version available

Revealing interfacial disorder at the growth-front of thick many-layer epitaxial graphene on SiC: a complementary neutron and X-ray scattering investigation

A. R. Mazza, A. Miettinen, A. A. Daykin, X. He, T. R. Charlton, M. Conrad, S. Guha, Q. Lu, G. Bian, E. H. Conrad and P. F. Miceli, Nanoscale, 2019, 11, 14434 DOI: 10.1039/C9NR03504D

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