MAX IV Staff R&D. LEEM, STM and transport in ballistic graphene nano-ribbons

by Alexei Zakharov (MAX-lab Lund University)

Tuesday 26 Feb 2019, 13:00 → 13:45 Europe/Stockholm

MAX III meeting room (MAX IV Laboratory)

Abstract

One of the ways to use graphene in field effect transistors is to introduce a band gap by quantum confinement effect. 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. Such epitaxial graphene nanoribbons are very important in fundamental science but if GNR are supposed to be used in advanced nano-electronics, high quality thin (<50nm) nanoribbons should be produced on a large (wafer) scale. The technique for scalable template growth of high quality GNR on Si-face of SiC(0001) will be presented along with detailed structural information and transport properties. The quality of the grown nanoribbons was confirmed by comprehensive characterization with atomic resolution STM(Scanning Tunneling Microscopy), dark field LEEM(Low Energy Electron Microscopy), micro-LEED (Low Energy Electron Diffraction) and transport measurements (using a four probe STM). This approach generates an entirely new platform for both fundamental and application driven research of quasi one-dimensional carbon based magnetism and spintronics.