TY - JOUR AU - Lin, You-Ron AU - Franke, Markus AU - Parhizkar, Shayan AU - Raths, Miriam AU - Wen-zhe Yu, Victor AU - Lee, Tien-Lin AU - Soubatch, Serguei AU - Blum, Volker AU - Tautz, F. Stefan AU - Kumpf, Christian AU - Bocquet, François C. TI - Boron nitride on SiC(0001) JO - Physical review materials VL - 6 IS - 6 SN - 2475-9953 CY - College Park, MD PB - APS M1 - FZJ-2022-02353 SP - 064002 PY - 2022 AB - In the field of van der Waals heterostructures, the twist angle between stacked two-dimensional layers has been identified to be of utmost importance for the properties of the heterostructures. In this context, we previously reported the growth of a single layer of unconventionally oriented epitaxial graphene that forms in a surfactant atmosphere [F. C. Bocquet et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 106102 (2020)]. The resulting G-R0∘ layer is aligned with the SiC lattice, and hence represents an important milestone towards high-quality twisted bilayer graphene, a frequently investigated model system in this field. Here, we focus on the surface structures obtained in the same surfactant atmosphere, but at lower preparation temperatures at which a boron nitride template layer forms on SiC(0001). In a comprehensive study based on complementary experimental and theoretical techniques, we find—in contrast to the literature—that this template layer is a hexagonal BxNy layer, but not high-quality hBN. It is aligned with the SiC lattice and gradually replaced by low-quality graphene in the 0∘ orientation of the BxNy template layer upon annealing. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000809873200002 DO - DOI:10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.6.064002 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/908066 ER -