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Bottom-gated epitaxial graphene

Nature Materials volume 10, pages 357–360 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

High-quality epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide (SiC) is today available in wafer size1,2. Similar to exfoliated graphene3,4, its charge carriers are governed by the Dirac–Weyl Hamiltonian5,6,7 and it shows excellent mobilities7,8. For many experiments with graphene, in particular for surface science, a bottom gate is desirable9,10,11,12,13. Commonly, exfoliated graphene flakes are placed on an oxidized silicon wafer that readily provides a bottom gate3,4,11. However, this cannot be applied to epitaxial graphene as the SiC provides the source material out of which graphene grows. Here, we present a reliable scheme for the fabrication of bottom-gated epitaxial graphene devices, which is based on nitrogen (N) implantation into a SiC wafer and subsequent graphene growth. We demonstrate working devices in a broad temperature range from 6 to 300 K. Two gating regimes can be addressed, which opens a wide engineering space for tailored devices by controlling the doping of the gate structure.

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Figure 1: Scheme of the bottom gate.
Figure 2: Gate response of ρ and 1/e RH of sample LD1 and LD2.
Figure 3: Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations for different gate voltages.
Figure 4: Measurement and simulation of the temperature dependent capacitance of sample HD2.
Figure 5: Gate response of ρ and 1/e RH of sample HD3 in the IPC (triangles) and the SC regime (circles).

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge support by the DFG under contracts WE 4542-5-1 and Se 1087/5-1, and within the Cluster of Excellence ‘Engineering of Advanced Materials’ (www.eam.uni-erlangen.de) at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. We acknowledge the use of the 16 T magnet provided by P. Müller.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lehrstuhl für Angewandte Physik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Staudtstr. 7, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

    Daniel Waldmann, Johannes Jobst, Michael Krieger & Heiko B. Weber

  2. Lehrstuhl für Technische Physik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erwin-Rommel-Str. 1, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

    Florian Speck & Thomas Seyller

Authors
  1. Daniel Waldmann
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Contributions

D.W. and J.J. carried out the experiment and data analysis. F.S. and T.S. developed the hydrogen intercalation procedure and assisted with sample preparation. D.W., J.J., M.K. and H.B.W. developed the model and wrote the manuscript. T.S. and H.B.W. conceived the experiment.

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Correspondence to Heiko B. Weber.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Waldmann, D., Jobst, J., Speck, F. et al. Bottom-gated epitaxial graphene. Nature Mater 10, 357–360 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2988

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