Incomplete screening by epitaxial graphene on the Si face of 6H-SiC(0001)

A biased scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip is used to study the ability of carriers in graphene to screen external electrostatic fields by monitoring the effect of tunneling-junction width on the position of image potential-derived surface states. These states are unusually sensitive to local electric fields due to the STM tip in both single layer and bilayer epitaxial graphene. This is attributed to the incomplete screening of applied fields in epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001). Our observations imply that charged impurity scattering is likely to be a dominant factor in the transport properties of epitaxial graphene on SiC. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3484966]