Band hybridization between graphene and Hex-Au(001) reconstructed surface

Terasawa, Tomoo   ; Matsunaga, Kazuya*; Hayashi, Naoki*; Ito, Takahiro*; Tanaka, Shinichiro*; Yasuda, Satoshi   ; Asaoka, Hidehito  

As a Hex-Au(001) surface shows one-dimensional corrugation and is chemically inert, it has been employed to study the effect of one-dimensional potential on graphene. Such potential has been expected to make the band structure of graphene anisotropic, which shows the mini-gap at the zone boundary across the potential and the high group velocity along the potential. However, the bandgap in the graphene on Hex-Au(001) was only indirectly suggested by scanning tunneling spectroscopy. Here, we report the band structure of graphene on Hex-Au(001) substrates using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and density functional theory (DFT) calculation. The ARPES image shows the bandgap in the graphene band close to the Au 6sp band. The DFT calculated band structure shows the bandgap not at the crossing point of the graphene bands but that of graphene and Au 6sp bands. We thus conclude that the bandgap originates from the hybridization between graphene and Au. This hybridization is similar to that observed in the graphene and Au interface on the SiC substrate. We expect that the hybridization between graphene and Au is essential as the Rashba splitting of 100 meV was observed around the gap.