Graphene formation on a 3C-SiC(111) thin film grown on Si(110) substrate

Abstract

With its industrial adaptability, epitaxial graphene (EG), formed by a UHV annealing of SiC substrates, is attracting recent attention. While hexagonal SiC bulk substrates have been solely used for this purpose, benefits in use of 3C-SiC virtual substrate founded on Si substrates could be enormous. We have succeeded in fabricating a graphene film on a 3C-SiC(111) virtual substrate, which was preformed on a Si(110) substrate by gas-source molecular beam epitaxy using monomethyl silane. The geometrical matching in this configuration greatly suppresses the strain in the SiC film, which is related to this successful formation of graphene. © 2009 The Surface Science Society of Japan.