Proximity screening greatly enhances electronic quality of graphene

Daniil Domaretskiy; Zefei Wu; Van Huy Nguyen; Ned Hayward; Ian Babich; Xiao Li; Ekaterina Nguyen; Julien Barrier; Kornelia Indykiewicz; Wendong Wang; Roman V. Gorbachev; Na Xin; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Lee Hague; Vladimir I. Fal’ko; Irina V. Grigorieva; Leonid A. Ponomarenko; Alexey I. Berdyugin; Andre K. Geim

doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09386-0

Journal article Proximity screening greatly enhances electronic quality of graphene

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

;

; ; ; ; ; ;

Download file (5.46 MB)
Download as zip (4.54 MB)

Collection

Citation

Daniil Domaretskiy, Zefei Wu, Van Huy Nguyen, Ned Hayward, Ian Babich, Xiao Li, Ekaterina Nguyen, Julien Barrier, Kornelia Indykiewicz, Wendong Wang, Roman V. Gorbachev, Na Xin, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Lee Hague, Vladimir I. Fal’ko, Irina V. Grigorieva, Leonid A. Ponomarenko, Alexey I. Berdyugin, Andre K. Geim. Proximity screening greatly enhances electronic quality of graphene. Nature. 2025, 644 (8077), 646-651. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09386-0

(BibTeX)

Description:

(abstract)

The electronic quality of two-dimensional (2D) systems is crucial for exploring quantum transport phenomena. In semiconductor heterostructures, decades of optimization have yielded record-quality 2D gases with transport and quantum mobilities reaching close to 108 and 106 cm2 V-1 s-1, respectively. Although the quality of graphene devices has also been improving, it remains comparatively lower. Here we report a transformative improvement in the electronic quality of graphene by employing graphite gates placed in its immediate proximity, at 1 nm separation. The resulting screening reduces charge inhomogeneity by two orders of magnitude, bringing it down to a few 107 cm-2 and limiting potential fluctuations to <1 meV. Quantum mobilities reach 107 cm2 V-1 s-1, surpassing by an order of magnitude those even in the highest-quality semiconductor heterostructures, while transport mobilities match their record. This quality enables Shubnikov – de Haas oscillations in fields as low as 1 mT, quantum Hall plateaus at 5 mT and 10-μm-scale ballistic transport in the Dirac electron- hole plasma. Our results show a reliable route to a new level of electronic quality, not only for graphene but also for other 2D materials and their heterostructures.

Rights: