Direct graphene growth on MgO: origin of the band gap.

A 2.5 monolayer (ML) thick graphene film grown by chemical vapor deposition of thermally dissociated C(2)H(4) on MgO(111), displays a significant band gap. The apparent six-fold low energy electron diffraction (LEED) pattern actually consists of two three-fold patterns with different 'A' and 'B' site diffraction intensities. Similar effects are observed for the LEED patterns of a 1 ML carbon film derived from annealing adventitious carbon on MgO(111), and for a 1.5 ML thick graphene film grown by sputter deposition on the 1 ML film. The LEED data indicate different electron densities at the A and B sites of the graphene lattice, suggesting that the observed band gap results from lifting the graphene HOMO/LUMO degeneracy at the Dirac point. The data also indicate that disparities in A site/B site LEED intensities decrease with increasing carbon overlayer thickness, suggesting that the graphene band gap size decreases with increasing number of graphene layers on MgO(111).

Electronic structure of a graphene/hexagonal-BN heterostructure grown on Ru(0001) by chemical vapor deposition and atomic layer deposition: extrinsically doped graphene.

A significant BN-to-graphene charge donation is evident in the electronic structure of a graphene/h-BN(0001) heterojunction grown by chemical vapor deposition and atomic layer deposition directly on Ru(0001), consistent with density functional theory. This filling of the lowest unoccupied state near the Brillouin zone center has been characterized by combined photoemission/k vector resolved inverse photoemission spectroscopies, and Raman and scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. The unoccupied σ*(Γ(1) +) band dispersion yields an effective mass of 0.05 m(e) for graphene in the graphene/h-BN(0001) heterostructure, in spite of strong perturbations to the graphene conduction band edge placement.