Large-area epitaxial growth of curvature-stabilized ABC trilayer graphene

Zhaoli Gao; Sheng Wang; Joel Berry; Qicheng Zhang; Julian Gebhardt; William M Parkin; Jose Avila; Hemian Yi; Chaoyu Chen; Sebastian Hurtado-Parra; Marija Drndić; Andrew M Rappe; David J Srolovitz; James M Kikkawa; Zhengtang Luo; Maria C Asensio; Feng Wang; A T Charlie Johnson

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-14022-3

Large-area epitaxial growth of curvature-stabilized ABC trilayer graphene

Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 28;11(1):546. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-14022-3.

Authors

Zhaoli Gao^#^{1

2}, Sheng Wang^#³, Joel Berry^#^{4

5}, Qicheng Zhang^#^{6

7}, Julian Gebhardt⁸, William M Parkin⁶, Jose Avila⁹, Hemian Yi⁹, Chaoyu Chen⁹, Sebastian Hurtado-Parra⁶, Marija Drndić⁶, Andrew M Rappe⁸, David J Srolovitz^{4

10}, James M Kikkawa⁶, Zhengtang Luo⁷, Maria C Asensio¹¹, Feng Wang^{12

13

14}, A T Charlie Johnson¹⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA. zlgao@cuhk.edu.hk.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. zlgao@cuhk.edu.hk.
³ Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
⁵ Materials Science Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA.
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
⁷ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
⁸ Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
⁹ Synchrotron-SOLEIL and Université Paris-Saclay Saint-Aubin, BP48, F91192, Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France.
¹⁰ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
¹¹ Materials Science Institute of Madrid (ICMM), Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC), Valencia Institute of Materials Science (ICMUV), MATINÉE: CSIC Associated Unit-(ICMM-ICMUV Valencia University), E-28049, Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain.
¹² Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. fengwang76@berkeley.edu.
¹³ Materials Science Division, Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. fengwang76@berkeley.edu.
¹⁴ Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. fengwang76@berkeley.edu.
¹⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA. cjohnson@physics.upenn.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The properties of van der Waals (vdW) materials often vary dramatically with the atomic stacking order between layers, but this order can be difficult to control. Trilayer graphene (TLG) stacks in either a semimetallic ABA or a semiconducting ABC configuration with a gate-tunable band gap, but the latter has only been produced by exfoliation. Here we present a chemical vapor deposition approach to TLG growth that yields greatly enhanced fraction and size of ABC domains. The key insight is that substrate curvature can stabilize ABC domains. Controllable ABC yields ~59% were achieved by tailoring substrate curvature levels. ABC fractions remained high after transfer to device substrates, as confirmed by transport measurements revealing the expected tunable ABC band gap. Substrate topography engineering provides a path to large-scale synthesis of epitaxial ABC-TLG and other vdW materials.