Local Electrical Properties of the 4H-SiC(0001)/Graphene Interface

Abstract

Local current transport across graphene/4H-SiC was studied with nanometric scale lateral resolution by Scanning Current Spectroscopy on both graphene grown epitaxially on 4H-SiC(0001) (EG-SiC) and graphene exfoliated from highly oriented pyrolitic graphite and deposited on 4H-SiC(0001) (DG-SiC). The study revealed that the Schottky barrier height (SBH) of EG/4H-SiC(0001) is lowered by ~0.49eV. This is explained in terms of Fermi-level pinning above the Dirac point in EG due to the presence of positively charged states at the interface between Si face of 4H-SiC and carbon-rich buffer layer. Furthermore, Scanning Capacitance Spectroscopy based method allowed evaluating local electron mean free path (lgr) in graphene. lgr in EG-SiC was observed to be, on average, ~0.4 times that in DG-SiC and exhibited large point-to-point variations due to presence of laterally homogeneous positively charged buffer layer at the interface. However, lgr in graphene on SiC was observed to be larger than on standard SiO2 samples (DG-SiO2), which is explained by better dielectric screening of charged impurities and lower surface polar phonon scattering at the graphene/substrate interface.