Persistent hysteresis in graphene-mica van der Waals heterostructures

We report the study of electronic transport in graphene-mica van der Waals heterostructures. We have designed various graphene field-effect devices in which mica is utilized as a substrate and/or gate dielectric. When mica is used as a gate dielectric we observe a very strong positive gate voltage hysteresis of the resistance, which persists in samples that were prepared in a controlled atmosphere down to even millikelvin temperatures. In a double-gated mica-graphene-hBN van der Waals heterostructure, we found that while a strong hysteresis occurred when mica was used as a substrate/gate dielectric, the same graphene sheet on mica substrate no longer showed hysteresis when the charge carrier density was tuned through a second gate with the hBN dielectric. While this hysteretic behavior could be useful for memory devices, our findings confirm that the environment during sample preparation has to be controlled strictly.