Revealing the electronic band structure of trilayer graphene on SiC: An angle-resolved photoemission study

摘要

In recent times, trilayer graphene has attracted wide attention owing to itsstacking and electric field dependent electronic properties. However, a directand well-resolved experimental visualization of its band structure has not yetbeen reported. In this work, we present angle resolved photoemissionspectroscopy (ARPES) data which show with high resolution the electronic bandstructure of trilayer graphene obtained on {\alpha}-SiC(0001) and{\beta}-SiC(111) via hydrogen intercalation. Electronic bands obtained fromtight-binding calculations are fitted to the experimental data to extract theinteratomic hopping parameters for Bernal and rhombohedral stacked trilayers.Low energy electron microscopy (LEEM) measurements demonstrate that thetrilayer domains extend over areas of tens of square micrometers, suggestingthe feasibility of exploiting this material in electronic and photonic devices.Furthermore, our results suggest that on SiC substrates the occurrence ofrhombohedral stacked trilayer is significantly higher than in natural bulkgraphite.