Graphene-assisted spontaneous relaxation towards dislocation-free heteroepitaxy

Sang-Hoon Bae; Kuangye Lu; Yimo Han; Sungkyu Kim; Kuan Qiao; Chanyeol Choi; Yifan Nie; Hyunseok Kim; Hyun S Kum; Peng Chen; Wei Kong; Beom-Seok Kang; Chansoo Kim; Jaeyong Lee; Yongmin Baek; Jaewoo Shim; Jinhee Park; Minho Joo; David A Muller; Kyusang Lee; Jeehwan Kim

doi:10.1038/s41565-020-0633-5

Graphene-assisted spontaneous relaxation towards dislocation-free heteroepitaxy

Nat Nanotechnol. 2020 Apr;15(4):272-276. doi: 10.1038/s41565-020-0633-5. Epub 2020 Feb 10.

Authors

Sang-Hoon Bae^#^{1

2}, Kuangye Lu^#^{1

2}, Yimo Han^#³, Sungkyu Kim^#^{1

2}, Kuan Qiao^{1

2}, Chanyeol Choi^{2

4}, Yifan Nie⁵, Hyunseok Kim^{1

2}, Hyun S Kum^{1

2}, Peng Chen^{1

2}, Wei Kong^{1

2}, Beom-Seok Kang^{1

2}, Chansoo Kim^{1

2}, Jaeyong Lee^{1

2}, Yongmin Baek⁶, Jaewoo Shim^{1

2}, Jinhee Park⁷, Minho Joo⁷, David A Muller^{3

8}, Kyusang Lee⁹, Jeehwan Kim^{10

11

12}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
² Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
³ School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁶ Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
⁷ Materials & Devices Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
⁸ Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
⁹ Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA. kl6ut@virginia.edu.
¹⁰ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. jeehwan@mit.edu.
¹¹ Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. jeehwan@mit.edu.
¹² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. jeehwan@mit.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 32042164
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-0633-5

Abstract

Although conventional homoepitaxy forms high-quality epitaxial layers^1-5, the limited set of material systems for commercially available wafers restricts the range of materials that can be grown homoepitaxially. At the same time, conventional heteroepitaxy of lattice-mismatched systems produces dislocations above a critical strain energy to release the accumulated strain energy as the film thickness increases. The formation of dislocations, which severely degrade electronic/photonic device performances^6-8, is fundamentally unavoidable in highly lattice-mismatched epitaxy^9-11. Here, we introduce a unique mechanism of relaxing misfit strain in heteroepitaxial films that can enable effective lattice engineering. We have observed that heteroepitaxy on graphene-coated substrates allows for spontaneous relaxation of misfit strain owing to the slippery graphene surface while achieving single-crystalline films by reading the atomic potential from the substrate. This spontaneous relaxation technique could transform the monolithic integration of largely lattice-mismatched systems by covering a wide range of the misfit spectrum to enhance and broaden the functionality of semiconductor devices for advanced electronics and photonics.