High-Temperature Quantum Hall Effect in Graphite-Gated Graphene Heterostructure Devices with High Carrier Mobility

Abstract

Since the discovery of the quantum Hall effect in 1980, it has attracted intense interest in condensed matter physics and has led to a new type of metrological standard by utilizing the resistance quantum. Graphene, a true two-dimensional electron gas material, has demonstrated the half-integer quantum Hall effect and composite-fermion fractional quantum Hall effect due to its unique massless Dirac fermions and ultra-high carrier mobility. Here, we use a monolayer graphene encapsulated with hexagonal boron nitride and few-layer graphite to fabricate micrometer-scale graphene Hall devices. The application of a graphite gate electrode significantly screens the phonon scattering from a conventional SiO2/Si substrate, and thus enhances the carrier mobility of graphene. At a low temperature, the carrier mobility of graphene devices can reach 3 × 105 cm2/V·s, and at room temperature, the carrier mobility can still exceed 1 × 105 cm2/V·s, which is very helpful for the development of high-temperature quantum Hall effects under moderate magnetic fields. At a low temperature of 1.6 K, a series of half-integer quantum Hall plateaus are well-observed in graphene with a magnetic field of 1 T. More importantly, the ν = ±2 quantum Hall plateau clearly persists up to 150 K with only a few-tesla magnetic field. These findings show that graphite-gated high-mobility graphene devices hold great potential for high-sensitivity Hall sensors and resistance metrology standards for the new Système International d’unités.

Keywords

• Graphene
• hBN
• heterostructure
• field-effect devices
• carrier mobility
• quantum Hall effect