First direct observation of a nearly ideal graphene band structure

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Nov 27;103(22):226803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.226803. Epub 2009 Nov 24.

Abstract

Angle-resolved photoemission and x-ray diffraction experiments show that multilayer epitaxial graphene grown on the SiC(0001) surface is a new form of carbon that is composed of effectively isolated graphene sheets. The unique rotational stacking of these films causes adjacent graphene layers to electronically decouple leading to a set of nearly independent linearly dispersing bands (Dirac cones) at the graphene K point. Each cone corresponds to an individual macroscale graphene sheet in a multilayer stack where AB-stacked sheets can be considered as low density faults.