Seed‐Layer‐Free Atomic Layer Deposition of Highly Uniform Al 2 O 3 Thin Films onto Monolayer Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon Carbide

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is the method of choice to obtain uniform insulating films on graphene for device applications. Owing to the lack of out-of-plane bonds in the sp(2) lattice of graphene, nucleation of ALD layers is typically promoted by functionalization treatments or predeposition of a seed layer, which, in turn, can adversely affect graphene electrical properties. Hence, ALD of dielectrics on graphene without prefunctionalization and seed layers would be highly desirable. In this work, uniform Al2O3 films are obtained by seed-layer-free thermal ALD at 250 degrees C on highly homogeneous monolayer (1L) epitaxial graphene (EG) (amp;gt;98% 1L coverage) grown on on-axis 4H-SiC(00…