A new direct growth method of graphene on Si-face of 6H-SiC by synergy of the inner and external carbon sources

Graphene is a promising two-dimensional material that has possible application in various disciplines, due to its super properties, including high carrier mobility, chemical stability, and optical transparency etc. In this paper, we report an inner and external carbon synergy (IECS) method to grow graphene on Si-face of 6H-SiC. This method combined the advantages of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and traditional epitaxial growth (EG) based on silicon carbide, which providing a feasible approach for growing graphene on the SiC substrates. The graphene was synthesized within just 3 min, which was more than one order of magnitude faster than the graphene grown on 6H-SiC substrates by the traditional EG method. The growth temperature was similar to 200 degrees C lower than the EG process. The directly grown graphene maintained the compatibility with the semiconductor technique, which is benefit for use in graphene-based microelectronic devices. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.