Condensed Matter Physics Seminar

Graphene has attracted substantial interest due to its relativistic band structure, ease of deposition, and almost ideal two-dimensional nature. While very high mobilities (even at room temperature) have been reported for graphene, its exposed nature as a single atomic layer of carbon makes it prone to disorder induced by processing steps during fabrication and environmental conditions. In particular at low densities or small length scales, this disorder can dominate the properties of graphene. In the first part of my talk I will present scanning gate measurements of graphene constrictions with evidence of disorder related phenomena in transport. In the second part I will discuss means to minimize the disorder in graphene such as using boron nitride as an alternative substrate and as well as a method we developed for removing processing based contaminants.