Epitaxial Growth of Graphene on SiC by Thermal Shock Annealing Within Seconds

The direct epitaxial growth of graphene on semi-insulating SiC presents significant potential for a variety of technologically important applications, including next-generation electronics, photonics, and quantum metrology. However, this approach also poses a competitive disadvantage in terms of quality and cost, primarily due to the uncontrollable and time-consuming nature of the annealing process. Herein, a thermal shock annealing (TSA) method is reported that enables kinetics-controlled epitaxial growth of graphene on SiC within 10 s, which efficiently fulfills the requirements for producing high-quality, few-layer, and low-cost graphene on SiC. The epitaxial graphene (EG) grown on both beta-SiC nanoparticles (SiC@EG NPs) and centimeter-scale alpha-SiC wafer (EG/SiC) exhibits mono- or bi-layer features with negligible structural defects. Moreover, the findings indicate that the TSA method can efficiently mitigate the persistent issue of step bunching conundrum and improve the flatness of EG/SiC. As an application demonstration, the significant enhancement of surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) by SiC@EG NPs is exhibited. The graphene plasmon arising on SiC@EG NPs enables SEIRA detection sensitivity of up to a monolayer of p-nitrobenzenethiol (p-NTP). Consequently, the precise regulation and comprehensive comprehension of TSA afford an exceedingly desirable approach to produce cost-effective, high-quality EG growth on SiC for diverse emerging application scenarios.

Automated summary

This study reports a thermal shock annealing method that enables fast and high-quality epitaxial growth of graphene on SiC. The method effectively mitigates structural defects and improves the flatness of graphene on SiC. The study also demonstrates the significant enhancement of surface-enhanced infrared absorption using graphene on SiC.