Exploring interlayer Dirac cone coupling in commensurately rotated few-layer graphene on SiC(000-1)

Claire Mathieu (1) , Edward H. Conrad (2) , Feng Wang (3) , Julien E. Rault (4) , Vitaliy Feyer (5) , Claus M. Schneider (6) , Olivier Renault (7) , Nick Barrett (8, 9)

1 IDEDH - Institut de Droit Européen des Droits de l'Homme - EA 3976
2 Georgia Institute of Technology [Atlanta]
3 IPGS-GE - Géophysique expérimentale (IPGS)
4 SSOLEIL - Synchrotron SOLEIL
5 Peter Grünberg Institut
6 CLILLAC-ARP (EA_3967) - Centre de Linguistique Inter-langues, de Lexicologie, de Linguistique Anglaise et de Corpus
7 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
8 LENSIS - Laboratoire d'Etude des NanoStructures et Imagerie de Surface
9 SPEC - UMR3680 - Service de physique de l'état condensé

We investigate electronic band-structure images in reciprocal space of few-layer graphene epitaxially grown on SiC(000-1). In addition to the observation of commensurate rotation angles of the graphene layers, the k-space images recorded near the Fermi edge highlight structures originating from diffraction of the Dirac cones due to the relative rotation of adjacent layers. The 21.9° and 27° rotation angles between two sheets of graphene are responsible for a periodic pattern that can be described with a superlattice unit cells. The superlattice generates replicas of Dirac cones with smaller wave vectors, because of a Brillouin zone folding. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Domains: Physics [physics]

Claire Mathieu, Edward H. Conrad, Feng Wang, Julien E. Rault, Vitaliy Feyer, et al.. Exploring interlayer Dirac cone coupling in commensurately rotated few-layer graphene on SiC(000-1). Surface and Interface Analysis, 2014, 46 (12-13), pp.1268 - 1272. ⟨10.1002/sia.5541⟩. ⟨cea-01376753⟩