High-Temperature Quantum Hall Effect in Graphite-Gated Graphene Heterostructure Devices with High Carrier Mobility

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Oct 26;12(21):3777. doi: 10.3390/nano12213777.

Abstract

Since the discovery of the quantum Hall effect in 1980, it has attracted intense interest in condensed matter physics and has led to a new type of metrological standard by utilizing the resistance quantum. Graphene, a true two-dimensional electron gas material, has demonstrated the half-integer quantum Hall effect and composite-fermion fractional quantum Hall effect due to its unique massless Dirac fermions and ultra-high carrier mobility. Here, we use a monolayer graphene encapsulated with hexagonal boron nitride and few-layer graphite to fabricate micrometer-scale graphene Hall devices. The application of a graphite gate electrode significantly screens the phonon scattering from a conventional SiO2/Si substrate, and thus enhances the carrier mobility of graphene. At a low temperature, the carrier mobility of graphene devices can reach 3 × 105 cm2/V·s, and at room temperature, the carrier mobility can still exceed 1 × 105 cm2/V·s, which is very helpful for the development of high-temperature quantum Hall effects under moderate magnetic fields. At a low temperature of 1.6 K, a series of half-integer quantum Hall plateaus are well-observed in graphene with a magnetic field of 1 T. More importantly, the ν = ±2 quantum Hall plateau clearly persists up to 150 K with only a few-tesla magnetic field. These findings show that graphite-gated high-mobility graphene devices hold great potential for high-sensitivity Hall sensors and resistance metrology standards for the new Système International d'unités.

Keywords: Graphene; carrier mobility; field-effect devices; hBN; heterostructure; quantum Hall effect.