Thickness Estimation of Epitaxial Graphene on SiC Using Attenuation of Substrate Raman Intensity

A simple, noninvasive method using Raman spectroscopy for the estimation of the thickness of graphene layers grown epitaxially on silicon carbide (SiC) is presented, enabling simultaneous determination of thickness, grain size, and disorder using the spectra. The attenuation of the substrate Raman signal due to the graphene overlayer is found to be dependent on the graphene film thickness deduced from x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of the surfaces. We explain this dependence using an absorbing overlayer model. This method can be used for mapping graphene thickness over a region and is capable of estimating thickness of multilayer graphene films beyond that possible by XPS and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES).