Quantum nanoconstrictions fabricated by cryo-etching in encapsulated graphene

We report on a novel implementation of the cryo-etching method, which enabled us to fabricate low-roughness hBN-encapsulated graphene nanoconstrictions with unprecedented control of the structure edges; the typical edge roughness is on the order of a few nanometers. We characterized the system by at...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Clericò, Vito, Delgado Notario, J. A., Saiz Bretín, Marta, Malyshev, Andrey, Meziani, Y. M., Hidalgo Alcalde, Pedro, Méndez Martín, María Bianchi, Amado, M., Domínguez-Adame Acosta, Francisco, Díaz Fernández, Enrique
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/13731
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/13731
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:538.9
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Graphene
Física de materiales
Física del estado sólido
2211 Física del Estado Sólido
Descripción
Sumario:We report on a novel implementation of the cryo-etching method, which enabled us to fabricate low-roughness hBN-encapsulated graphene nanoconstrictions with unprecedented control of the structure edges; the typical edge roughness is on the order of a few nanometers. We characterized the system by atomic force microscopy and used the measured parameters of the edge geometry in numerical simulations of the system conductance, which agree quantitatively with our low temperature transport measurements. The quality of our devices is confirmed by the observation of well defined quantized 2e^2/h conductance steps at zero magnetic field. To the best of our knowledge, such an observation reports the clearest conductance quantization in physically etched graphene nanoconstrictions. The fabrication of such high quality systems and the scalability of the cryo-etching method opens a novel promising possibility of producing more complex truly-ballistic devices based on graphene.