Title: Gas-source MBE of 3C-SiC on Si and growth of epitaxial graphene thereon

Date: Friday, June 1

Time: 10:00

Venue: Grove (EKT seminar room, Electrum C4)

Speaker: Prof. Suemitsu, Tohoku University

Abstract:

By use of monomethylsilane as a single precursor in gas-source molecular beam epitaxy, qualified 3C-SiC thin films can be grown on Si substrates. For low-index crystallographic orientations of the Si substrate (i.e. (001), (110), (111)), on-axis 3C-SiC films normally grow. By annealing these 3C-SiC films on Si in vacuo at and above 1200 °C, epitaxial graphene (EG) can be grown thereon [1]. What is intriguing in this “graphene on Si” (GOS) engineering is the fact that we can tune the interfacial, and thus the electronic, structures of EG by simply changing the crystallographic orientation of the 3C-SiC face [1]. This can be realized even within a single wafer by employing the well-established microfabrication of Si substrates, which led us to the proposal of hybrid integration of photonic and electronic graphene devices within a chip. Another merit of GOS lies in the presence of 3C-SiC(111) growth on Si(110) under certain conditions. This rotated epitaxy not only substantially reduces the strain in the film caused by the large lattice mismatch (~20%) between Si and SiC but also readily provides a C-terminated 3C-SiC(111) surface on Si, in contrast to the Si-terminated 3C-SiC(111)/Si(111). Interaction between EG and Si-terminated SiC can also be a cause for degradation. For this we have recently proposed a novel method based on microwave annealing to eliminate the buffer layer at the EG/Si-terminated SiC interface [2]. As a result of this treatment, the buffer layer is decoupled from the SiC substrate and becomes the second graphene layer of otherwise mono-EG [2].

[1]  M. Suemitsu, S.Jiao, H. Fukidome, Y. Tateno, I. Makabe and T. Nakabayashi, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 47 (2014) 094016.

[2]  K-S Kim, G-H Park, H. Fukidome, T. Someya, T. Iimori, F. Komori, I. Matsuda, M. Suemitsu, Carbon 130 (2018) 792.

Welcome!

Qin Wang RISE Acreo and Carl-Mikael Zetterling (Bellman) EKT KTH

Bio:

Maki Suemitsu was born in Sapporo, Japan and obtained his B. Eng. In Electronics in 1975, M. Eng. In Electronics in 1977, and D. Eng. In Electronics in 1980, all at Tohoku University. After graduation, he joined Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC), Tohoku University, where he started his career as a semiconductor applied physicist. His major field has been the growth and its surface science of semiconducting thin films, which includes development of gas-source molecular beam epitaxy (GSMBE) of SC on Si substrates. This technology eventually brought him to the development of epitaxial graphene formation on Si substrates when he was a professor at RIEC. He is now a Specially approved visiting professor at Tohoku University.