Induced growth of quasi-free-standing graphene on SiC substrates

Free-standing graphene grown on SiC substrates is desirable for micro- and nano-electronic device applications. In this work, an induced growth method to fabricate quasi-free-standing graphene on SiC was proposed, where graphene nucleation sites were generated on the SiC substrate and active carbon sources were subsequently introduced to grow graphene centered along the established nucleation sites. The structure and morphology of the cultivated graphene were characterized by using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy, and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Compared to the traditional epitaxial growth methods on SiC substrates, this approach shows a significant reduction of the buffer layer. This study provides an efficient method for growing quasi-free-standing graphene on SiC substrates and is believed to be able to broaden the application of graphene in electronic devices as SiC is an intrinsically outstanding wide bandgap semiconductor.