Competing scanning tunneling microscope tip-interlayer interactions for twisted multilayer graphene on the a-plane SiC surface

Abstract Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images are obtained for the first time on few layer and twisted multilayer epitaxial graphene states synthesized on n + 6H-SiC a-plane non-polar surface. The twisted graphene is determined to have a rotation angle of 5.4° between the top two layers, by comparing moire patterns from stick and ball models of bilayer graphene to experimentally obtained images. Furthermore, the experimental moire pattern shows dynamic behavior, continuously shuffling between two stable surface arrangements one bond length apart. The moire pattern shifts by more than 1 nm, making it easy to observe with STM. Explanation of this dynamic behavior is attributed to electrostatic interactions between the STM tip and the graphene sample.