Early Stage Researcher 15, GRA SEMI, SPAIN
Project title and work package:
Graphene and 2D materials growth, work package 2D-materials growth and nanostructuring.
Objectives:
Your project objective is to obtain high mobility graphene suitable for nanoelectronic devices. The mobility of graphene on Si/SiO2 is limited by the substrate to a certain extent and this limits the applications of graphene in certain nanoelectronic applications. Therefore, substrates that are suitable for graphene such as, for example, h-BN will be investigated, as the mobility of CVD graphene has been shown to dramatically improve when h-BN is used as a substrate between the SiO2 and the graphene layer. Large area h-BN will be grown using CVD on top of metal catalysts such as Cu (for few layer h-BN) and Fe (for multilayer h-BN).
In addition, atmospheric adsorbates can also affect the performance of an atomically thin material: sandwich or encapsulating layers (metal oxides, h-BN) will also be studied in order to protect the graphene. h-BN/graphene/h-BN sandwich structures will be investigated in order to obtain the high mobility graphene samples. Encapsulation is also required for graphene doping control.
You will collaborate with Early Stage Researcher 10 at CTH (Sweden) for the growth of ballistic graphene nanoribbons on the steps of an annealed SiC substrate.
The characterisation of the grown films will be carried out using Raman, optical microscopy, IR, SEM, etc. The electronic properties will be determined using field effect or Hall Effect measurements in samples patterned by optical lithography.
Expected Results:
- Improve the mobility of graphene at least three-fold by using h-BN.
- Successful CVD growth of h-BN on Cu or other metallic catalyst substrates.
- Scale up of h-BN growth and transfer up to 4”.
Planned secondments:
at NGU, Spain (2 months, Year 1) for training in spintronics, at CTH, Sweden (2 months, Year 2) growing graphene nanoribbons, at CNRS, France (2 months, Y2) for training in scanning probe microscopy.
RESEARCHER IN CHARGE: