Effect of Growth Morphology on the Electronic Structure of Epitaxial Graphene on SiC.docVIP

Graphene, 2013, 2, 55-59 /10.4236/graphene.2013.21008 Published Online January 2013 (/journal/graphene) Effect of Growth Morphology on the Electronic Structure of Epitaxial Graphene on SiC Michael D. Williams , Dennis W. Hess 1 2 Center of Excellence in Microelectronics and Photonics, Department of Physics, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, USA School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA Email: mdwms@ 1 2 Received November 16, 2012; revised December 20, 2012; accepted January 18, 2013 ABSTRACT Ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy is used to investigate the electronic structure of epitaxial graphene grown by the thermal decomposition of the carbon face of 4H SiC. We find that the growth of the film on the chemical mechanically polished and hydrogen etched surface enhances spectral features in the valence band structure compared to the film grown on an unpolished hydrogen etched substrate. This result is indicative of a more highly ordered surface structure compared to the morphologically rough material and shows that substrate preparation plays an important role in the quality of the film. The work function of the smooth surface film is found to be 0.4 eV higher than that for graphite and 0.1 eV less than for the rough surface growth. Keywords: Graphene; SiC; UPS; Work Function; Electronic Structure 1. Introduction valence band structure. Spicer and co-workers in the early 70 s showed conclusively in comparison studies of amorphous Si and Ge samples to corresponding crystal- line material that UPS analysis is a definite indicator of material crystallinity [9]. More recently, a UPS study of few layer graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition on polycrystalline nickel reported a strong correlation to the graphene quality and structure [10]. This study inves- tigates the effects of surface morphology on the elec- t