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Towards growth of pure AB-stacked bilayer graphene single crystals

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Abstract

Given its intriguing band structure and unique tunable bandgap, AB-stacked bilayer graphene has great potentials in the applications of high-end electronics, optoelectronics and semiconductors. The epitaxial growth of AB-stacked single-crystal bilayer graphene films requires a strict AB-stacked lattice, identical orientations and seamless stitching of bilayer graphene islands. However, the particles inevitably present on the metal surface that produced during high temperature growth would induce random orientations, twisted stacking islands, and uncontrollable multilayers, which is a great challenge to overcome. Here, we propose a heat-resisting-box assisted strategy to produce nearly pure AB-stacked bilayer graphene single-crystal films on Cu/Ni (111) foils. With our technique, the particles on the Cu/Ni (111) surface are effectively eliminated, which greatly minimizes the occurrence of randomly twisted islands and uncontrollable multilayers. The as-grown AB-stacked bilayer graphene films show > 99% alignment and > 99% AB stacking order. Our work provides a promising method towards the growth of pure AB-stacked bilayer graphene single crystals and would accelerate its device applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Nos. 2020B1515020043 and 2023A1515012743), Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research (No. 2021B0301030002), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12322406, 52102043, 61905215, 52025023, 51991342 and 52021006), the Key R&D Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2020B010189001), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2022YFA1403500), the Pearl River Talent Recruitment Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2019ZT08C321), and the Key Project of Science and Technology of Guangzhou (No. 202201010383). We thank the National Supercomputer Centre in Tianjin for computing support.

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Author notes

  1. Xiaowen Zhang, Tao Zhou, Yunlong Ren, and Zuo Feng contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Structure and Fundamental Interactions of Matter, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Engineering and Quantum Materials, School of Physics, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Xiaowen Zhang, Tao Zhou, Yunlong Ren, Bin Wang, Jinxia Bai, Zhilie Tang, Xu Zhou & Xiaozhi Xu

  2. Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Quantum Matter, School of Physics, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Xiaowen Zhang, Tao Zhou, Yunlong Ren, Bin Wang, Jinxia Bai, Zhilie Tang, Xu Zhou & Xiaozhi Xu

  3. Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia

    Xiaowen Zhang

  4. State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zuo Feng, Qinghe Wang, Muhong Wu & Kaihui Liu

  5. Institute for Frontier Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210094, China

    Ruixi Qiao

  6. International Centre for Quantum Materials, Collaborative Innovation Centre of Quantum Matter, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Muhong Wu & Kaihui Liu

  7. Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dongguan, 523808, China

    Muhong Wu & Kaihui Liu

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  1. Xiaowen Zhang
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  2. Tao Zhou
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  11. Xu Zhou
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Correspondence to Xiaozhi Xu.

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Zhang, X., Zhou, T., Ren, Y. et al. Towards growth of pure AB-stacked bilayer graphene single crystals. Nano Res. 17, 4616–4621 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6348-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6348-9

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