Probing the dielectric response of the interfacial buffer layer in epitaxial graphene via optical spectroscopy

Published

November 28, 2017

Author(s)

Heather M. Hill, Albert Rigosi, Sugata Chowdhury, Yanfei Yang, Nhan Van Nguyen, Francesca Tavazza, Randolph Elmquist, David B. Newell, Angela R. Hight Walker

Abstract

Monolayer epitaxial graphene (EG) is a suitable candidate for a variety of electronic applications. One advantage of EG growth on the Si face of SiC is that it develops as a single crystal, as does the layer below, referred to as the interfacial buffer layer (IBL), whose properties include an electronic band gap. Though much research has been conducted to learn about the electrical properties of the IBL, not nearly as much work has been reported on the optical properties of the IBL. In this work, we combine measurements from Mueller matrix ellipsometry, differential reflectance contrast, atomic force microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, as well as calculations from Kramers-Kronig analyses and density functional theory (DFT), to determine the dielectric function of the IBL within the energy range of 1 eV to 8.5 eV.

Citation

Physical Review B

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

epitaxial graphene, buffer layer, ellipsometry, optical dielectric functions, differential reflectance contrast, Kramers-Kronig relations

Citation

Hill, H. , Rigosi, A. , Chowdhury, S. , Yang, Y. , Nguyen, N. , Tavazza, F. , Elmquist, R. , Newell, D. and Hight Walker, A. (2017), Probing the dielectric response of the interfacial buffer layer in epitaxial graphene via optical spectroscopy, Physical Review B (Accessed October 31, 2025)