Selective fabrication of free-standing ABA and ABC trilayer graphene with/without Dirac-cone energy bands

Abstract

Graphene is a single-layer carbon sheet with a honeycomb structure, and bilayer graphene consists of two graphene sheets with AB stacking. In trilayer graphene, the third graphene sheet has two possible stacking sequences, A or C, when it is overlaid on bilayer graphene. It has been theoretically predicted that trilayer graphene exhibits a variety of novel electronic properties with/without a Dirac-cone band, depending on the stacking sequence. In this regard, trilayer graphene has a high potential for widening the capability of graphene-based electronic devices. However, the difficulty of selective fabrication has hindered the progress of research. Here, we report the first success in the selective fabrication of quasi-free-standing trilayer graphene with ABA or ABC stacking grown epitaxially on hydrogen-terminated silicon carbide. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) clearly demonstrated that our trilayer graphene with ABA stacking has a massless Dirac-like band near the Fermi level, while that with ABC stacking shows a parabolic non-Dirac-like band dispersion.