Remote heteroepitaxy across graphene: Hydrothermal growth of vertical ZnO microrods on graphene-coated GaN substrate

Semiconductor epitaxy on two-dimensional materials is beneficial for transferrable and flexible device applications. Graphene, due to the absence of permanent electric dipoles, cannot screen the electric field coming from the opposite side surface, allowing remote epitaxy for heteroepitaxy. This study demonstrates remote heteroepitaxy of ZnO microrods (MRs) on the GaN substrate across graphene layers via hydrothermal growth. Even the use of tri-layer graphene yields the remote heteroe-pitaxial MR arrays. Transmission electron microscopy reveals the remote heteroepitaxial relation between ZnO MRs and the GaN substrate despite the existence of graphene interlayers in between them. Density-functional theory calculations show that charge transfer along the z-direction at graphene/c-GaN possibly attract adatoms leading to remote heteroepitaxy, implying the field permeability of graphene. The ability of graphene to be released from the host substrate is exploited to exfoliate the overlayer MRs and regenerate the substrate. Published by AIP Publishing.