Surface-energy-compensated fabrication of single-crystal alloy films with atomic-scale flatness
Single-crystal alloy thin films (SATFs), featuring highly ordered atomic lattices and superior composition-dependent properties, hold great potential for applications including crystal epitaxy, surface catalysis, and energy conversion. However, their scalable synthesis and practical applications have been hindered by the difficulty of achieving wafer-scale single crystallinity, atomic-scale surface flatness, as well as flexible and uniform control of alloy composition. Here, we developed a surface-energy-compensated technique for synthesizing a series of wafer-scale binary and ternary SATFs with sub-nanometer roughness (minimum roughness lower than 0.2 nm) and uniform, controllable elemental composition with a wide range (5 ~ 50 at%). Furthermore, using CuPtNi(111) ternary SATFs as epitaxial substrates, we achieve wafer-scale synthesis of wrinkle-free graphene single crystals exhibiting fine electronic quality, including a uniform sheet resistance of 552 Ω sq<sup>-1</sup> with 4.5% deviation, an ultrahigh carrier mobility up to over half a million cm<sup>2</sup> V<sup>-1</sup> s<sup>-1</sup> at 1.7 K, and well-developed quantum plateaus.
Authors
- Kaicheng Jia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7682-0937)
- Junhao Liao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8502-5219)
- S. Wang
- Zhuofeng Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0652-7003)
- Weichuan Chen
- Yunsong Ge
- Jincan Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7131-4491)
- Bo Han Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5407-453X)
- Mengyuan Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5955-7127)
- Li Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2783-1114)
- Xiucai Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1882-2507)
- G.F. Gao
- Ali Cai
- Hao Li
- Sheng Li
- Bo Jin
- Yue Sun
- Jiaxin Shao
- Zhongfan Liu
- Xiumei Ma
- Dapeng Zhang
- Mengxi Liu
Institutions
- North University of China (CN)
- Peking University (CN)
- Soochow University (CN)
- Beijing Graphene Institute (CN)
- Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (CN)
- National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (CN)
- Center for Life Sciences (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Shaanxi Normal University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2026-01-07
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68196-0
- Primary Topic
- Graphene research and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Tsinghua University
- Peking University
- Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences