Room temperature strain-induced Landau levels in graphene on a wafer-scale platform

Graphene is a powerful playground for studying a plethora of quantum phenomena. One of the remarkable properties of graphene arises when it is strained in particular geometries and the electrons behave as if they were under the influence of a magnetic field. Previously, these strain-induced pseudomagnetic fields have been explored on the nano- and micrometer-scale using scanning probe and transport measurements. Heteroepitaxial strain, in contrast, is a wafer-scale engineering method. Here, we show that pseudomagnetic fields can be generated in graphene through wafer-scale epitaxial growth. Shallow triangular nanoprisms in the SiC substrate generate strain-induced uniform fields of 41 T, enabling the observation of strain-induced Landau levels at room temperature, as detected by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, and confirmed by model calculations and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of exploiting strain-induced quantum phases in two-dimensional Dirac materials on a wafer-scale platform, opening the field to new applications [1].

[1] P. Nigge, A.C. Qu, E. Lantagne-Hurtubise, E. Marsell, S. Link, G. Tom, M. Zonno, M. Michiardi, M. Schneider, S. Zhdanovich, G. Levy, U. Starke, C. Gutierrez, D. Bonn, S.A. Burke, M. Franz, A. Damascelli, Sci. Adv. 5, eaaw5593 (2019).