Third Day Poster Session, 17 June 2010 - NanoTR-VI

Poster Session, Thursday, June 17
Theme F686 - N1123
Epitaxial Graphene Synthesis on Silicon Carbide Substrate
Hüsnü Aslan 1 , 1 ,NihanÖzkan 2 ,and Ahmet Oral 1
1 Faculty of Engineering & Natural Sciences University, Istanbul, 34956, Turkey
2 Department of Physics Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, 34469, Turkey
Abstract – Large scale single layer epitaxial graphene is going to be produced in the ultrahigh vacuum chamber and
characterized by Atomic Force Microscope and Low Energy Electron Diffraction.
Graphene, one atomic thick layer form of graphite,
is composed of hexagonally arranged carbon atoms and
the layers between two graphene sheets are bonded by
weak van der Waals interaction. Its unique electrical
and mechanical properties have recently made it popular
in both science and technology.
Graphene could be produced by using several methods
both chemically and mechanically. The most popular
and the easiest method is called mechanical
exfoliation[1]. However, by using this method one can
produce small-area graphene layer. In order to obtain
large scale graphene, the method called epitaxial growth
on SiC or CVD can be used. This method includes two
steps. For the first step, SiC has to be etched by
hydrogen gas in order to prepare suitable SiC surface
for epitaxial growth. In this process, cleaned SiC
samples are annealed in a vacuum chamber with %5 H 2
and %95 Ar gas flow. For the second step, SiC chip is
heated in ultrahigh vacuum to temperatures between
1000-1500°C in order to sublimate Si [2,3].
In this work, we are planning to produce monolayer
graphene on commercially available 4H-SiC(0001)
sample. The growth process is going to be performed in
an ultrahigh vacuum chamber equipped with e-beam
heater and graphene layers are going to be characterized
by Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED). In
addition to this, thickness of this graphene layer is going
to be measured by Atomic Force Microscope.
ers
107T720, 107T892 & 108T930 and NanoMagnetics
Instruments Ltd.
[1] Geim, A-K., and Novoselov, K-S.The rise of graphene,
Nature Materials, 6, 183-191(2007).
[2]Hass, J., De Heer, W.A., and Conrad, E.H. The growth and
morphology of epitaxial multilayer graphene, Journal of
physics: Condensed Matter, 20, 323202 (2008).
[3]Ramachandran V., Brady, M.F., Smith, A.R., Feenstra,
R.M., and Greve, D.W. Preparation of atomically flat surfaces
on silicon carbide using hydrogen etching, Journal of
Electronic Materials, 27, 308-312, (1998)
.
Figure 1. AFM image of an SiC (0001) wafer before
hydrogen etching.
6th Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Conference, zmir, 2010 666