Topographic and electronic contrast of the graphene moire on Ir(111) probed by scanning tunneling microscopy and noncontact atomic force microscopy

Abstract

Epitaxial graphene grown on transition-metal surfaces typically exhibits a moiré pattern due to the lattice mismatch between graphene and the underlying metal surface. We use both scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to probe the electronic and topographic contrast of the graphene moiré on the Ir(111) surface. STM topography is influenced by the local density of states close to the Fermi energy and the local tunneling barrier height. Based on our AFM experiments, we observe a moiré corrugation of 35±10 pm, where the graphene-Ir(111) distance is the smallest in the areas where the graphene honeycomb is atop the underlying iridium atoms and larger on the fcc or hcp threefold hollow sites.