▎ 摘　　要

Graphene grown on SiC(0001) by Si depletion has a stepped surface with terraces and step heights up to 10 times larger than those observed in the original SiC surface. This is due to an additional step bunching that usually occurs during graphene formation. In this work, we show that such process can be suppressed by controlling the initial step structure of the SiC surface. In this case, the graphene monolayer is formed on the SiC without modification of the original surface morphology. We observe that the absence of step bunching during growth has no influence on the graphene structural quality. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3638058]