Metal-covered van der Waals epitaxy of gallium nitride films on graphitic substrates by ECR-MBE

Abstract

We demonstrated that repetition of gallium deposition and nitrogen-rich supply is a superior approach to fabricate gallium nitride (GaN) thin films on graphene by electron-cyclotron-resonance plasma-excited molecular beam epitaxy. The gallium layer, which covered the surface at the initial growth stage, reduced nitrogen-plasma-induced damage to the graphene. It thereby might suppress the nucleation of misoriented crystals and enabled the growth of c-axis-oriented GaN films. This approach was more effective on graphene transferred onto a GaN template, which suggests the possibility of remote-homoepitaxy reflecting the electric potential of the GaN template unscreened by graphene.