Characterization of SiC-grown epitaxial graphene microislands using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Single-layer graphene microislands with smooth edges and no visible grain boundary were epitaxially grown on the C-face of 4H-SiC and then characterized at the nanoscale using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). Although these graphene islands appear highly homogeneous in micro-Raman imaging, TERS reveals the nanoscale strain variation caused by ridge nanostructures. A G' band position shift up to 9 cm(-1) and a band broadening up to 30 cm(-1) are found in TERS spectra obtained from nanoridges, which is explained by the compressive strain relaxation mechanism. The small size and refined nature of the graphene islands help in minimizing the inhomogeneity caused by macroscale factors, and allow a comparative discussion of proposed mechanisms of nanoridge formation.

Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopic measurement of stress change in the local domain of epitaxial graphene on the carbon face of 4H-SiC(000-1).

We develop a bulk silver tip for tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) and obtain TERS spectra of epitaxial graphene on the carbon face of 4H-SiC(000-1) with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Thanks to the high quality of TERS spectra we firstly find that the G band in the TERS spectra exhibits position-by-position variations in both lower wavenumber shifts and spectral broadening. The analysis of the variations reveals that the shifts and broadenings have a linear correlation between each other, indicating that the variations are induced by the position dependent local stress on graphene based on a uniaxial strain model.