Abstract
Single-crystal alloy thin films (SATFs), featuring highly ordered atomic lattices and superior composition-dependent properties, hold great potential for applications including crystal epitaxy, surface catalysis, and energy conversion. However, their scalable synthesis and practical applications have been hindered by the difficulty of achieving wafer-scale single crystallinity, atomic-scale surface flatness, as well as flexible and uniform control of alloy composition. Here, we developed a surface-energy-compensated technique for synthesizing a series of wafer-scale binary and ternary SATFs with sub-nanometer roughness (minimum roughness lower than 0.2 nm) and uniform, controllable elemental composition with a wide range (5 ~ 50 at%). Furthermore, using CuPtNi(111) ternary SATFs as epitaxial substrates, we achieve wafer-scale synthesis of wrinkle-free graphene single crystals exhibiting fine electronic quality, including a uniform sheet resistance of 552 Ω sq−1 with 4.5% deviation, an ultrahigh carrier mobility up to over half a million cm2 V−1 s−1 at 1.7 K, and well-developed quantum plateaus.
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Relevant data supporting the key findings of this study are available within the article and the Supplementary Information file. All raw data generated during the current study are available from the corresponding authors upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. T2188101, 52202033, and 52372038), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2022YFA1204900), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 2252064), the Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (No. BNLMS-CXTD−202001), and Jiangsu Materials Science Association (No. JSTJ−2024-047). We acknowledge the Electron Microscopy Laboratory of Peking University, China, for the use of JEM-ARM200F NEOARM transmission electron microscopy. We thank the Center for Physicochemical Analysis and Measurement, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for assistance with XRD characterization. We thank the engineer Chong Guo, Analysis Center, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, for her help with the TOF-SIMS test.
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J.S., S.L., Z.S., and Y.S. contributed equally to this work. Z.L. and K.J. conceived the experiment. Z.L. and K.J. supervised the project. J.S., S.L., Y.S., and G.G. conducted the fabrication of SATFs and CVD growth of graphene. J.S., S.L., Y.S., G.G., S.W., Y.G., D.Z., W.C., and B.Y. took and analyzed the OM, EBSD, AFM, XRD, and SAED data. M.Y.L. and M.X.L. conducted the STM characterization. X.M. conducted the STEM and EDS characterization. W.C. and J.Z. conducted the Raman measurements. S.W. conducted the in-plane XRD characterization. J.S. and Y.S. conducted the transfer of graphene. Z.S., J.L., and L.L. performed device fabrication and electrical measurements. J.S., G.G., and B.J. conducted sheet resistance measurements. A.C. designed the automatic OM system. H.L. and X.S. conducted the DFT calculations. The manuscript was written by Z.L. and K.J. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.
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Shao, J., Li, S., Shi, Z. et al. Surface-energy-compensated fabrication of single-crystal alloy films with atomic-scale flatness. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68196-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68196-0
