We demonstrate the growth of high quality graphene layers by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on insulating and conductive SiC substrates. This method provides key advantages over the well-developed epitaxial graphene growth by Si sublimation that has been known for decades. (1) CVD growth is much less sensitive to SiC surface defects resulting in high electron mobilities of ∼1800 cm(2)/(V s) and enables the controlled synthesis of a determined number of graphene layers with a defined doping level. The high quality of graphene is evidenced by a unique combination of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, transport measurements, scanning tunneling microscopy and ellipsometry. Our measurements indicate that CVD grown graphene is under less compressive strain than its epitaxial counterpart and confirms the existence of an electronic energy band gap. These features are essential for future applications of graphene electronics based on wafer scale graphene growth.
Structural investigations of hydrogenated epitaxial graphene grown on SiC(0001) are presented. It is shown that hydrogen plays a dual role. In addition to contributing to the well-known removal of the buffer layer, it goes between the graphene planes, resulting in an increase of the interlayer spacing to 3.6 Å–3.8 Å. It is explained by the intercalation of molecular hydrogen between carbon planes, which is followed by H2 dissociation, resulting in negatively charged hydrogen atoms trapped between the graphene layers, with some addition of covalent bonding to carbon atoms. Negatively charged hydrogen may be responsible for p-doping observed in hydrogenated multilayer graphene.
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