Robust Two-Dimensional Electronic Properties in Three-Dimensional Microstructures of Rotationally Stacked Turbostratic Graphene

Abstract

We report on the electronic properties of turbostratic graphitic microdisks, rotationally stacked systems of graphene layers, where interlayer twisting leads to electronic decoupling resulting in charge-transport properties that retain the two dimensionality of graphene, despite the presence of a large number of layers. A key fingerprint of this reduced dimensionality is the effect of weak charge-carrier localization that we observe at low temperatures. The disks’ resistivity measured as a function of magnetic field changes its shape from parabolic at room temperature to linear at a temperature of 2.7 K indicating further this type of two-dimensional transport. Compared to Bernal stacked graphite, turbostratic graphene is mechanically much more robust, and it exhibits almost negligible variations of the electrical properties between samples. We demonstrate a reproducible resistivity of (3.52±0.11)×10−6 Ω m, which is a particularly low value for graphitic systems. Combined with large charge-carrier mobilities demonstrated at low temperatures of up to 7×104 cm2/V s, typical for carbon-based crystalline conductors, such disks are highly interesting from a scientific point of view and, in particular, for applications where robust electronic properties are required.