AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Graphene Focus Topic Thursday Sessions
       Session GR+AS+TF-ThM

Paper GR+AS+TF-ThM12
Moiré Superstructures of Graphene on Facetted Nickel Islands

Thursday, October 21, 2010, 11:40 am, Room Brazos

Session: Graphene Synthesis on Metals
Presenter: C.V. Ciobanu, Colorado School of Mines
Authors: Y. Murata, University of California Los Angeles
V. Petrova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.B. Kappes, Colorado School of Mines
A. Ebnonnasir, Colorado School of Mines
I. Petrov, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Y.-H. Xie, University of California Los Angeles
C.V. Ciobanu, Colorado School of Mines
S. Kodambaka, University of California Los Angeles
Correspondent: Click to Email
Using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, in combination with density functional theory (DFT), we investigated the morphology and electronic structure of monolayer graphene grown on the (111) and (110) facets of three-dimensional nickel islands on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite substrate. We observed hexagonal and stripe moiré patterns with periodicities of 22 Å and 12 Å, respectively, on (111) and (110) facets of the Ni islands. Graphene domains are also observed to grow, as single crystals, across adjacent facets and over facet boundaries. We suggest that the unexpected observation of moiré patterns of graphene on lattice-matched Ni(111) and the formation of single-crystalline domains across different surface orientations are a consequence of the kinetic limitations of growth, rather than of the strength of the C-Ni interactions. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy data indicate that the graphene layers are metallic on both Ni(111) and Ni(110), in agreement with the DFT calculations. We attribute this behavior to strong hybridization between the d-bands on Ni and the p bands of carbon. Our findings point to the possibility of preparing large-area epitaxial graphene layers even on polycrystalline Ni substrates.