▎ 摘　　要

Thermal decomposition of silicon carbide (SiC) is frequently used for the formation of graphene on semi-insulating substrates, but the growth mechanism is not well understood and thus the method to form monolayer graphene with larger domain size especially on step-free or wide terrace surfaces is not known. In this work, various stages of graphene growth on SiC (0001) during annealing at 1-atm-Ar atmosphere were observed by in situ scanning electron microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. We found that a prolonged heating at 1550 degrees C over 1h brought about the growth of monolayer graphene, starting from step edges and continuously across the whole terrace without pit formation. Monolayer graphene with the domain size over 3 mu m was fabricated on wide terraces, which covered more than 90% areas of the sample surfaces. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.