Chemical-doping-driven crossover from graphene to “ordinary metal” in epitaxial graphene grown on SiC

Abstract

Atmospheric chemical doping can be used to modify the electronic properties of graphene. Here we report that the chemical atmospheric doping (derived from air, oxygen and water vapor) of low-carrier-density monolayer epitaxial graphene on SiC can be readily tuned by a simple low-temperature (T ≤ 450 K), in situ vacuum gentle heating method. Interestingly, such an approach allows, for the first time, the observation of a crossover from graphene (μ_t/μ_q ≈ 2) to an “ordinary metal” (μ_t/μ_q ≈ 1) with decreasing carrier density, where μ_t and μ_q are transport mobility and quantum mobility, respectively. In the low carrier density limit, our results are consistent with the theoretical prediction that μ_t is inversely proportional to charged impurity density. Our data also suggest that atmospheric chemical doping can be used to vary intervalley scattering in graphene which plays a crucial role in backward scattering events.