After the pioneering investigations into graphene-based electronics at Georgia Tech, great strides have been made developing epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide (EG) as a new electronic material. EG has not only demonstrated its potential for large scale applications, it also has become an important material for fundamental two-dimensional electron gas physics. It was long known that graphene mono and multilayers grow on SiC crystals at high temperatures in ultrahigh vacuum. At these temperatures, silicon sublimes from the surface and the carbon rich surface layer transforms to graphene. However the quality of the graphene produced in ultrahigh vacuum is poor due to the high sublimation rates at relatively low temperatures. The Georgia Tech team developed growth methods involving encapsulating the SiC crystals in graphite enclosures, thereby sequestering the evaporated silicon and bringing growth process closer to equilibrium. In this confinement controlled sublimation (CCS) process, very high-quality graphene is grown on both polar faces of the SiC crystals. Since 2003, over 50 publications used CCS grown graphene, where it is known as the “furnace grown” graphene. Graphene multilayers grown on the carbon-terminated face of SiC, using the CCS method, were shown to consist of decoupled high mobility graphene layers. The CCS method is now applied on structured silicon carbide surfaces to produce high mobility nano-patterned graphene structures thereby demonstrating that EG is a viable contender for next-generation electronics. Here we present for the first time the CCS method that outperforms other epitaxial graphene production methods.

In spite of its excellent electronic properties, the use of graphene in field-effect transistors is not practical at room temperature without modification of its intrinsically semimetallic nature to introduce a bandgap. Quantum confinement effects can create a bandgap in graphene nanoribbons, but existing nanoribbon fabrication methods are slow and often produce disordered edges that compromise electronic properties. Here, we demonstrate the self-organized growth of graphene nanoribbons on a templated silicon carbide substrate prepared using scalable photolithography and microelectronics processing. Direct nanoribbon growth avoids the need for damaging post-processing. Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and electrostatic force microscopy confirm that nanoribbons as narrow as 40 nm can be grown at specified positions on the substrate. Our prototype graphene devices exhibit quantum confinement at low temperatures (4 K), and an on-off ratio of 10 and carrier mobilities up to 2,700 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) at room temperature. We demonstrate the scalability of this approach by fabricating 10,000 top-gated graphene transistors on a 0.24-cm(2) SiC chip, which is the largest density of graphene devices reported to date.

The maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) quantifies the practical upper bound for useful circuit operation. We report here an fmax of 70 GHz in transistors using epitaxial graphene grown on the C-face of SiC. This is a significant improvement over Si-face epitaxial graphene used in the prior high-frequency transistor studies, exemplifying the superior electronics potential of C-face epitaxial graphene. Careful transistor design using a high κ dielectric T-gate and self-aligned contacts further contributed to the record-breaking fmax.

The quantum Hall effect, with a Berry's phase of π is demonstrated here on a single graphene layer grown on the C-face of 4H silicon carbide. The mobility is ∼ 20,000 cm 2 /V·s at 4 K and 15,000 cm 2 /V·s at 300 K despite contamination and substrate steps. This is comparable to the best exfoliated graphene flakes on SiO 2 and an order of magnitude larger than Si-face epitaxial graphene monolayers. These and other properties indicate that C-face epitaxial graphene is a viable platform for graphenebased electronics.

Abstract