Growth of Ordered Graphene Ribbons by Sublimation Epitaxy

Ordered graphene ribbons were grown on the surface of 4 degrees off-axis 4H-SiC wafers by sublimation epitaxy, and characterized by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and micro-Raman spectroscopy (mu-Raman). SEM showed that there were gray and dark ribbons on the substrate surface, and AFM further revealed that these ordered graphene ribbons had clear stepped morphologies due to surface step-bunching. It was shown by mu-Raman that the numbers of graphene layers of these two types of regions were different. The gray region was composed of mono- or bilayer ordered graphene ribbon, while the dark region was of tri- or few-layer ribbon. Meanwhile, ribbons were all homogeneous and had a width up to 40 mu m and a length up to 1000 mu m, without micro defects such as grain boundaries, ridges, or mono- and few-layer graphene mixtures. The results of this study are useful for optimized growth of high-quality graphene film on silicon carbide crystal.