While numerous methods have been proposed to produce semiconducting graphene, a significant bandgap has never been demonstrated. The reason is that, regardless of the theoretical gap formation mechanism, disorder at the sub-nanometer scale prevents the required chiral symmetry breaking necessary to open a bandgap in graphene. In this work, we show for the first time that a 2D semiconducting graphene film can be made by epitaxial growth. Using improved growth methods, we show by direct band measurements that a bandgap greater than 0.5 eV can be produced in the first graphene layer grown on the SiC(0001) surface. This work demonstrates that order, a property that remains lacking in other graphene systems, is key to producing electronically viable semiconducting graphene.
@article{arxiv.1505.00435,
title = {Semiconducting graphene from highly ordered substrate interactions},
author = {M. S. Nevius and M. Conrad and F. Wang and A. Celis and M. N. Nair and A. Taleb-Ibrahimi and A. Tejeda and E. H. Conrad},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.00435},
year = {2015}
}