Wafer scale growth and characterization of edge specific graphene nanoribbons

Abstract: One of the ways to use graphene in field effect transistors is to introduce a band gap by quantum confinement effect [1]. That is why narrow graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with width less than 50nm are considered to be essential components in future graphene electronics. The growth of graphene on sidewalls of SiC(0001) mesa structures using scalable photolithography was shown to produce high quality GNR with excellent transport properties [2-7]. Such epitaxial graphene nanoribbons are very important in fundamental science but if GNR are supposed to be used in advanced nanoelectronics, high quality thin (<50nm) nanoribbons should be produced on a large (wafer) scale. Here we present a technique for scalable template growth of high quality GNR on Si-face of SiC(0001) and provide detailed structural information along with transport properties. We succeeded to grow GNR along both [1-100] and [11-20] crystallographic directions. The quality of the grown nanoribbons was confirmed by comprehensive characterization with high resolution STM, dark field LEEM and transport measurements.