  Remote epitaxy on monolayer graphene is promising for synthesis of highly
lattice mismatched materials, exfoliation of free-standing membranes, and
re-use of expensive substrates. However, clear experimental evidence of a
remote mechanism remains elusive. In many cases, due to contaminants at the
transferred graphene/substrate interface, alternative mechanisms such as
pinhole-seeded lateral epitaxy or van der Waals epitaxy can explain the
resulting exfoliatable single-crystalline films. Here, we find that growth of
the Heusler compound GdPtSb on clean graphene on sapphire substrates produces a
30 degree rotated epitaxial superstructure that cannot be explained by pinhole
or van der Waals epitaxy. With decreasing growth temperature the volume
fraction of this 30 degree domain increases compared to the direct epitaxial 0
degree domain, which we attribute to slower surface diffusion at low
temperature that favors remote epitaxy, compared to faster surface diffusion at
high temperature that favors pinhole epitaxy. We further show that careful
graphene/substrate annealing ($T\sim 700 ^\circ C$) and consideration of the
film/substrate vs film/graphene lattice mismatch are required to obtain epitaxy
to the underlying substrate for a variety of other Heusler films, including
LaPtSb and GdAuGe. The 30 degree rotated superstructure provides a possible
experimental fingerprint of remote epitaxy since it is inconsistent with the
leading alternative mechanisms.

Materials Science