No Arabic abstract
We developed a multi-level lithography process to fabricate graphene p-n-p junctions with the novel geometry of contactless, suspended top gates. This fabrication procedure minimizes damage or doping to the single atomic layer, which is only exposed to conventional resists and developers. The process does not require special equipment for depositing gate dielectrics or releasing sacrificial layers, and is compatible with annealing procedures that improve device mobility. Using this technique, we fabricate graphene devices with suspended local top gates, where the creation of high quality graphene p-n-p junctions is confirmed by transport data at zero and high magnetic fields.
We have fabricated graphene devices with a top gate separated from the graphene layer by an air gap--a design which does not decrease the mobility of charge carriers under the gate. This gate is used to realise p-n-p structures where the conducting properties of chiral carriers are studied. The band profile of the structures is calculated taking into account the specifics of the graphene density of states and is used to find the resistance of the p-n junctions expected for chiral carriers. We show that ballistic p-n junctions have larger resistance than diffusive ones. This is caused by suppressed transmission of chiral carriers at angles away from the normal to the junction.
Spatial separation of electrons and holes in graphene gives rise to existence of plasmon waves confined to the boundary region. Theory of such guided plasmon modes within hydrodynamics of electron-hole liquid is developed. For plasmon wavelengths smaller than the size of charged domains plasmon dispersion is found to be omega ~ q^(1/4). Frequency, velocity and direction of propagation of guided plasmon modes can be easily controlled by external electric field. In the presence of magnetic field spectrum of additional gapless magnetoplasmon excitations is obtained. Our findings indicate that graphene is a promising material for nanoplasmonics.
Owing to a linear and gapless band structure and a tunability of the charge carrier type, graphene offers a unique system to investigate transport of Dirac Fermions at p-n junctions (PNJs). In a magnetic field, combination of quantum Hall physics and the characteristic transport across PNJs leads to a fractionally quantized conductance associated with the mixing of electron-like and hole-like modes and their subsequent partitioning. The mixing and partitioning suggest that a PNJ could be used as an electronic beam-splitter. Here we report the shot noise study of the mode mixing process and demonstrate the crucial role of the PNJ length. For short PNJs, the amplitude of the noise is consistent with an electronic beam-splitter behavior, whereas, for longer PNJs, it is reduced by the energy relaxation. Remarkably, the relaxation length is much larger than typical size of mesoscopic devices, encouraging using graphene for electron quantum optics and quantum information processing.
Accessing intrinsic properties of a graphene device can be hindered by the influence of contact electrodes. Here, we capacitively couple graphene devices to superconducting resonant circuits and observe clear changes in the resonance- frequency and -widths originating from the internal charge dynamics of graphene. This allows us to extract the density of states and charge relaxation resistance in graphene p-n junctions without the need of electrical contacts. The presented characterizations pave a fast, sensitive and non-invasive measurement of graphene nanocircuits.
We investigate the electron transport through a graphene p-n junction under a perpendicular magnetic field. By using Landauar-Buttiker formalism combining with the non-equilibrium Green function method, the conductance is studied for the clean and disordered samples. For the clean p-n junction, the conductance is quite small. In the presence of disorders, it is strongly enhanced and exhibits plateau structure at suitable range of disorders. Our numerical results show that the lowest plateau can survive for a very broad range of disorder strength, but the existence of high plateaus depends on system parameters and sometimes can not be formed at all. When the disorder is slightly outside of this disorder range, some conductance plateaus can still emerge with its value lower than the ideal value. These results are in excellent agreement with the recent experiment.