Zhaoli Gao, Julian Gebhardt, Chaoyu Chen, Qicheng Zhang, William M. Parkin, Sheng Wang, A. T. Charlie Johnson, Sebastian Hurtado-Parra, David J. Srolovitz, Marija Drndic, James M. Kikkawa, Feng Wang, José Avila, Hemian Yi, Maria C. Asensio, Joel Berry, Zhengtang Luo, Andrew M. Rappe, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), Commissariat à l'Ènergie Atomique et aux Ènergies Alternatives (France), Department of Energy (US), Guangdong Science and Technology Department, German Research Foundation, and National Science Foundation (US)
The properties of van der Waals (vdW) materials often vary dramatically with the atomic stacking order between layers, but this order can be difficult to control. Trilayer graphene (TLG) stacks in either a semimetallic ABA or a semiconducting ABC configuration with a gate-tunable band gap, but the latter has only been produced by exfoliation. Here we present a chemical vapor deposition approach to TLG growth that yields greatly enhanced fraction and size of ABC domains. The key insight is that substrate curvature can stabilize ABC domains. Controllable ABC yields ~59% were achieved by tailoring substrate curvature levels. ABC fractions remained high after transfer to device substrates, as confirmed by transport measurements revealing the expected tunable ABC band gap. Substrate topography engineering provides a path to large-scale synthesis of epitaxial ABC-TLG and other vdW materials., We thank Prof. Paul Heiney for useful discussions and Mr. Sheng Wang for help in creating Fig. 4a. This work was supported by the NSF EFRI 2-DARE 1542879. The Synchrotron SOLEIL is supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Commissariat `a l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA), France. J.B. and D.J.S. thank Jian Han for useful discussions and were supported as part of the Center for the Computational Design of Functional Layered Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) under Award DE-SC0012575. Part of J.B.ʼs contribution was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. W.P. and M.D. acknowledge support from the NSF EFRI 2-DARE 1542707 and NSF EAGER 1838456. Z.L. appreciates support by the NSFC-RGC Joint Research Scheme (N_HKUST607/17) and the Guangzhou Science and Technology Project (201704030134). J.G. thanks the German Research Council (DFG) for support via grants GE2827/1-1 and GE2827/2-1. J.M.K. thanks the support from NSF MRSEC DMR-1720530. The infrared near-field nanoscopy measurements is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05-CH11231 (Sub-wavelength Metamaterial program). A.M.R. acknowledges support of the National Science Foundation, under Grant DMR-1719353.