• Iacopi, Francesca
• Mishra, Neeraj
• Boeckl, John

Abstract

The Review Article by Mishra et al. (pp. 2277–2289) provides detailed insight into the graphene growth on SiC surfaces, its properties and technological relevance. The outstanding properties of graphene and the leading graphene growth techniques such as micromechanical exfoliation, CVD growth on metals and thermal decomposition of SiC are summarized. From the perspective of electronic device fabrication, thermal decomposition of SiC appears the most promising, thanks to its direct–growth process on a semiconductor surface, and the extent of control on number of layers, quality, and uniformity obtained. However, bulk SiC substrates present limitations in terms of costs, sizes and difficulty in micromachining. Direct growth of graphene on heteroepitaxial 3C–SiC on Si substrates is a promising alternative, fully compatible with established silicon fabrication technologies and allowing seamless integration. The cover image shows STM atomicscale snapshots of the sequence of surface transformations on 3C–SiC(111)/Si(111) leading from SiC(111) to monolayer graphene in UHV by high–temperature annealing (1250 °C). The sequence of surface reconstructions in the three insets occurs from bottom right to top left. Background image: bilayer graphene. (Dr. Bharati Gupta is kindly acknowledged for the images.)

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• semiconductor
• carbide
• Silicon
• annealing
• thermal decomposition
• chemical vapor deposition
• scanning tunneling microscopy