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Origin of the energy bandgap in epitaxial graphene

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 258–259 (2008)Cite this article

To the Editor

In their recent Nature Materials article “Substrate-induced bandgap opening in epitaxial graphene”1, Zhou et al. present thickness-dependent electronic bandstructure measurements (ref. 1, Fig. 2a–c) by angle-resolved photo-emission spectroscopy, with similar data to those reported by our group previously2. From the data, Zhou et al. assert that chemical bonds to the substrate break the 'A–B' symmetry of the graphene lattice, opening a gap in the bands near the Dirac energy ED. This contradicts our observation of a kink at ED related to electron-plasmon scattering3, a conclusion supported by the strong doping-dependence of the kink and by theory4,5; it also contradicts scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) measurements and theory, which find no such gap6,7. Zhou et al. also assert that gaps observed in multilayer graphene are dominated by this same substrate effect, and not by the electric field across the film as proposed by Ohta and colleagues2,8. In advancing these claims, Zhou et al. have misrepresented our momentum distribution curve (MDC) self-energy analysis3 as naively including artefacts from tails of far-away energy distribution curve (EDC) peaks. Actually, our MDC and EDC peaks always coincide as a consequence of our self-consistent treatment9 and careful alignment. Such a self-consistent treatment is much more informative than arbitrarily drawn dispersion lines that purport to show a gap.

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Figure 1: Dependence of the electronic structure of graphene on sample preparation.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Eli Rotenberg, Aaron Bostwick, Taisuke Ohta & Jessica L. McChesney

  2. Institut für Physik der Kondensierten Materie, Lehrstuhl für Technische Physik, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erwin-Rommel-Straße 1, Erlangen, D-91058, Germany

    Thomas Seyller

  3. Department of Molecular Physics, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, Berlin, 14195, Germany

    Karsten Horn

Authors
  1. Eli Rotenberg
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  2. Aaron Bostwick
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  3. Taisuke Ohta
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  4. Jessica L. McChesney
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  5. Thomas Seyller
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  6. Karsten Horn
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Correspondence to Eli Rotenberg.

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Rotenberg, E., Bostwick, A., Ohta, T. et al. Origin of the energy bandgap in epitaxial graphene. Nature Mater 7, 258–259 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2154a

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