SR-PES study on the formation of epitaxial graphene on Si substrates

Suemitsu, Maki*; Takahashi, Ryota*; Handa, Hiroyuki*; Saito, Eiji*; Imaizumi, Kei*; Fukidome, Hirokazu*; Teraoka, Yuden; Yoshigoe, Akitaka 

The up-to-date industrial fabrication method of graphene is a epitaxial graphene method, in which graphene layers are formed on the SiC substrate after thermal annealing in the vacuum condition. This method, however, has a large disadvantage, that is, an SiC bulk substrate with a large size diameter is not available with low prices. We have succeeded to make graphene on the Si substrate by thermal annealing of a 3C-SiC ultra-thin layer (80-100 nm) formed epitaxially on the Si substrate in the vacuum conditions (Graphene-On-Silicon;GOS). In this study, in order to make clear mechanisms of the GOS formation processes, low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) have been applied to observe surface structures. Consequently, graphene formation processes from the 3C-SiC(111) layer on the Si(111) substrate has been found to be same as those on the 6H-SiC(0001) substrate.