Rapid low-temperature synthesis of graphene-coated SiC substrates for remote and van der Waals epitaxy
Non-conventional epitaxial techniques, such as van der Waals epitaxy (vdWE) and remote epitaxy, have attracted substantial attention in the semiconductor research community for their capability to repeatedly produce high-quality free-standing films from a single mother wafer. Successful implementation of these epitaxial techniques depends on creating a robust, uniform two-dimensional (2D) material surface. The conventional method for fabricating graphene on silicon carbide (SiC) is high-temperature graphitization. However, the extremely high temperature required for silicon sublimation (typically above 1500 °C) causes step-bunching of the SiC surface, forming non-uniform multilayer graphene stripes and an unfavorable surface morphology for epitaxial growth. Here, we developed a wafer-scale graphitization technique that allows fast synthesis of single-crystalline graphene at ultra-low temperatures by metal-assisted graphitization (MAG). We found annealing conditions that enable SiC dissociation while avoiding silicide formation, producing uniform single-crystalline graphene while maintaining the surface morphology of the substrate. The graphene thickness can be controlled by varying the metal thickness or annealing temperature, enabling remote epitaxy or vdWE. We successfully produced freestanding single-crystalline III-N (AlN, GaN) films on graphene/SiC via the 2D material-based layer transfer technique. Our results show that low-temperature graphene synthesis via MAG offers a promising route to producing large-scale ultra-wide bandgap free-standing crystalline membranes.