Stacking-Dependent Electronic Structure of Trilayer Graphene Resolved by Nanospot Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

The crystallographic stacking order in multilayer graphene plays an important role in determining its electronic structure. In trilayer graphene, rhombohedral stacking (ABC) is particularly intriguing, exhibiting a flat band with an electric-field tunable band gap. Such electronic structure is distinct from simple hexagonal stacking (AAA) or typical Bernal stacking (ABA) and is promising for nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics applications. So far clean experimental electronic spectra on the first two stackings are missing because the samples are usually too small in size (μm or nm scale) to be resolved by conventional angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Here, by using ARPES with a nanospot beam size (NanoARPES), we provide direct experimental evidence for the coexistence of three different stackings of trilayer graphene and reveal their distinctive electronic structures directly. By fitting the experimental data, we provide important experimental band parameters for describing the electronic structure of trilayer graphene with different stackings.