The application of two-dimensional (2D) materials has alleviated a number of challenges of traditional epitaxy and pushed forward the integration of dissimilar materials. Besides acting as a seed layer for van der Waals epitaxy, the 2D materials─being atom(s) thick─have also enabled wetting transparency in which the potential field of the substrate, although partially screened, is still capable of imposing epitaxial overgrowth. One of the crucial steps in this technology is the preservation of the quality of 2D materials during and after their transfer to a substrate of interest. In the present study, we show that by honing the achievements of traditional epitaxy and wet chemistry a hybrid approach can be devised that offers a unique perspective for the integration of functional oxides with a silicon platform. It is based on SrO-assisted deoxidation and controllable coverage of silicon surface with a layer(s) of spin-coated graphene oxide, thus simultaneously allowing both direct and van der Waals epitaxy of SrTiO3 (STO). We were able to grow a high-quality STO pseudo-substrate suitable for further overgrowth of functional oxides, such as PbZr1-xTixO3 (PZT). Given that the quality of the films grown on a reduced graphene oxide-buffer layer was almost identical to that obtained on SiC-derived graphene, we believe that this approach may provide new routes for direct and "remote" epitaxy or layer-transfer techniques of dissimilar material systems.

Advanced Materials Department Jožef Stefan Institute 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia

Department of Dielectrics Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences 182 00 Prague Czech Republic

Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices and Department of Electronics East China Normal University 200241 Shanghai China

Laboratory of Physics Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences─National Institute of the Republic of Serbia University of Belgrade 11351 Belgrade Serbia

MESA Institute for Nanotechnology University of Twente 7522 NB Enschede The Netherlands

National Institute of Chemistry 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia

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Robust SrTiO3 Passivation of Silicon Photocathode by Reduced Graphene Oxide for Solar Water Splitting