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Heterostructures consisting of two-dimensional materials have shown new physical phenomena, novel electronic and optical properties, and new device concepts not observed in bulk material systems or purely three dimensional heterostructures. These new effects originated mostly from the van der Waals interaction between the different layers. Here we report that a new optical and electronic device platform can be provided by heterostructures of 2D graphene with a metal oxide (TiO2). Our novel direct synthesis of graphene/TiO2 heterostructure is achieved by C60 deposition on transition Ti metal surface using a molecular beam epitaxy approach and O2 intercalation method, which is compatible with wafer scale growth of heterostructures. As-grown heterostructures exhibit inherent photosensitivity in the visible light spectrum with high photo responsivity. The photo sensitivity is 25 times higher than that of reported graphene photo detectors. The improved responsivity is attributed to optical transitions between O 2p orbitals in the valence band of TiO2 and C 2p orbitals in the conduction band of graphene enabled by Coulomb interactions at the interface. In addition, this heterostructure provides a platform for realization of bottom gated graphene field effect devices with graphene and TiO2 playing the roles of channel and gate dielectric layers, respectively.

Twisted graphene is of particular interest due to several intriguing characteristics, such as its the Fermi velocity, van Hove singularities and electronic localization. Theoretical studies recently suggested the possible bandgap opening and tuning. Here, we report a novel approach to producing epitaxial twisted graphene on SiC (0001) and the observation of its intrinsic bandgap behaviour. The direct deposition of C60 on pre-grown graphene layers results in few-layer twisted graphene confirmed by angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy and Raman analysis. The strong enhanced G band in Raman and sp(3) bonding characteristic in X-ray photoemission spectroscopy suggests the existence of interlayer interaction between adjacent graphene layers. The interlayer spacing between graphene layers measured by transmission electron microscopy is 0.352 ± 0.012 nm. Thermal activation behaviour and nonlinear current-voltage characteristics conclude that an intrinsic bandgap is opened in twisted graphene. Low sheet resistance (~ 160 Ω □(-1) at 10 K) and high mobility (~2,000 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) at 10 K) are observed.