Persistent hysteresis in graphene-mica van der Waals heterostructures

We report the study of electronic transport in graphene-mica van der Waals heterostructures. We have designed various graphene field-effect devices in which mica is utilized as a substrate and/or gate dielectric. When mica is used as a gate dielectric we observe a very strong positive gate voltage hysteresis of the resistance, which persists in samples that were prepared in a controlled atmosphere down to even millikelvin temperatures. In a double-gated mica-graphene-hBN van der Waals heterostructure, we found that while a strong hysteresis occurred when mica was used as a substrate/gate dielectric, the same graphene sheet on mica substrate no longer showed hysteresis when the charge carrier density was tuned through a second gate with the hBN dielectric. While this hysteretic behavior could be useful for memory devices, our findings confirm that the environment during sample preparation has to be controlled strictly.

Jens Mohrmann, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi and Romain Danneau

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