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Qu, Amy Chenge

University of British Columbia

Graphene, the first truly 2D material to be isolated, is host to a wealth of remarkable properties. It can be modified in a variety of ways—strained, twisted, stacked, placed on a substrate, decorated with adatoms, etc.—to further enhance these properties or introduce new ones. In this thesis, we use several complementary surface characterization techniques to study two methods of modifying epitaxial graphene on a silicon carbide (SiC) substrate via the addition of other atoms. In the first method, we induce the Kekulé distortion—a periodic distortion of the bonds in graphene—using a small number of lithium atoms (<0.2% monolayer) adsorbed on the graphene surface. Mediated by the graphene, the adatoms interact over large distances, leading to symmetry breaking between graphene unit cells and a (√3×√3) R30° superstructure. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we observe the formation of the superstructure in the appearance of a new Dirac cone in the centre of the Brillouin zone due to band folding. The same superstructure was confirmed by the appearance of new spots in low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) experiments. ARPES data also reveals a gap opening 2∆kek = (238±3) meV at the Dirac point. Using a Monte Carlo toy model, we study the importance of deposition parameters in the formation of the Kekulé phase. Finally, we show that this phase is generic to other graphene systems, regardless of charge carrier type or density. In the second method, we intercalate copper atoms between the graphene and the SiC substrate by contacting it with copper paste and annealing in vacuum. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), we observe the formation of 2.2 Å tall islands under the graphene, which modify the observed graphene/SiC superstructure from SiC (6×6) to SiC (6√3×6√3) R30°. The same periodicity is observed in LEED, and the intercalation of copper is confirmed by the appearance of additional bands in ARPES. The resulting material is stable for years even in ambient conditions. These two methods produce simple, robust new phases in graphene grown on a wafer-sized insulating substrate, suggesting great promise for the eventual widespread use of graphene in everyday electronics.

Text

2021-08-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/79480

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/