Local and Global Screening Properties of Graphene Revealed through Landau Level Spectroscopy

One-atom thick crystalline layers and their vertical heterostructures carry the promise of designer electronic materials that are unattainable by standard growth techniques. In order to realize their potential it is necessary to isolate them from environmental disturbances in particular those introduced by the substrate. But finding and characterizing suitable substrates, and minimizing the random potential fluctuations they introduce, has been a persistent challenge in this emerging field. Here we show that Landau-level (LL) spectroscopy is exquisitely sensitive to potential fluctuations on both local and global length scales. Harnessing this technique we demonstrate that the insertion of an intermediate graphene layer provides superior screening of substrate induced disturbances, more than doubling the electronic mean free path. Furthermore, we find that the proximity of hBN acts as a nano-scale vacuum cleaner, dramatically suppressing the global potential fluctuations. This makes it possible to fabricate high quality devices on standard SiO2 substrates.