No Arabic abstract
We fabricate a vertical thin-film barristor device consisting of highly doped silicon (gate), 300 nm SiO2 (gate dielectric), monolayer graphene, pentacene, and a gold top electrode. We show that the current across the device is modulated by the Fermi energy level of graphene, tuned with an external gate voltage. We interpret the device current within the thermionic emission theory, showing a modulation of the energy barrier between graphene and pentacene as large as 300meV.
We use time-resolved molecular orbital mapping to explore fundamental processes of excited wave packets and charge transfer dynamics in organic films on femtosecond time scales. We investigate a bilayer pentacene film on Ag(110) by optical laser pump and FEL probe experiments. From the angle-resolved photoemission signal, we obtain time-dependent momentum maps of the molecular valence states that can be related to their molecular initial states by simulations of the involved photoemission matrix elements. We discover a state above the Fermi edge that is temporarily occupied after optical excitation. The wave function of this state is imaged and identified as a transient charge transfer exciton extending over two neighboring molecules.
The relativistic charge carriers in monolayer graphene can be manipulated in manners akin to conventional optics (electron-optics): angle-dependent Klein tunneling collimates an electron beam (analogous to a laser), while a Veselago refraction process focuses it (analogous to an optical lens). Both processes have been previously investigated, but the collimation and focusing efficiency have been reported to be relatively low even in state-of-the-art ballistic pn-junction devices. These limitations prevented the realization of more advanced quantum devices based on electron-optical interference, while understanding of the underlying physics remains elusive. Here, we present a novel device architecture of a graphene microcavity defined by carefully-engineered local strain and electrostatic fields. We create a controlled electron-optic interference process at zero magnetic field as a consequence of consecutive Veselago refractions in the microcavity and provide direct experimental evidence through low-temperature electrical transport measurements. The experimentally observed first-, second-, and third-order interference peaks agree quantitatively with the Veselago physics in a microcavity. In addition, we demonstrate decoherence of the interference by an external magnetic field, as the cyclotron radius becomes comparable to the interference length scale. For its application in electron-optics, we utilize Veselago interference to localize uncollimated electrons and characterize its contribution in further improving collimation efficiency. Our work sheds new light on relativistic single-particle physics and provides important technical improvements toward next-generation quantum devices based on the coherent manipulation of electron momentum and trajectory.
We report an efficient technique to induce gate-tunable two-dimensional superlattices in graphene by the combined action of a back gate and a few-layer graphene patterned bottom gate complementary to existing methods. The patterned gates in our approach can be easily fabricated and implemented in van der Waals stacking procedures allowing flexible use of superlattices with arbitrary geometry. In transport measurements on a superlattice with lattice constant $a=40$ nm well pronounced satellite Dirac points and signatures of the Hofstadter butterfly including a non-monotonic quantum Hall response are observed. Furthermore, the experimental results are accurately reproduced in transport simulations and show good agreement with features in the calculated band structure. Overall, we present a comprehensive picture of graphene-based superlattices, featuring a broad range of miniband effects, both in experiment and in theoretical modeling. The presented technique is suitable for studying more advanced geometries which are not accessible by other methods.
We analyze the effect of screening provided by the additional graphene layer in double layer graphene heterostructures (DLGs) on transport characteristics of DLG devices in the metallic regime. The effect of gate-tunable charge density in the additional layer is two-fold: it provides screening of the long-range potential of charged defects in the system, and screens out Coulomb interactions between charge carriers. We find that the efficiency of defect charge screening is strongly dependent on the concentration and location of defects within the DLG. In particular, only a moderate suppression of electron-hole puddles around the Dirac point induced by the high concentration of remote impurities in the silicon oxide substrate could be achieved. A stronger effect is found on the elastic relaxation rate due to charged defects resulting in mobility strongly dependent on the electron denisty in the additional layer of DLG. We find that the quantum interference correction to the resistivity of graphene is also strongly affected by screening in DLG. In particular, the dephasing rate is strongly suppressed by the additional screening that supresses the amplitude of electron-electron interaction and reduces the diffusion time that electrons spend in proximity of each other. The latter effect combined with screening of elastic relaxation rates results in a peculiar gate tunable weak-localization magnetoresistance and quantum correction to resistivity. We propose suitable experiments to test our theory and discuss the possible relevance of our results to exisiting data.
Valley pseudospin, the quantum degree of freedom characterizing the degenerate valleys in energy bands, is a distinct feature of two-dimensional Dirac materials. Similar to spin, the valley pseudospin is spanned by a time reversal pair of states, though the two valley pseudospin states transform to each other under spatial inversion. The breaking of inversion symmetry induces various valley-contrasted physical properties; for instance, valley-dependent topological transport is of both scientific and technological interests. Bilayer graphene (BLG) is a unique system whose intrinsic inversion symmetry can be controllably broken by a perpendicular electric field, offering a rare possibility for continuously tunable valley-topological transport. Here, we used a perpendicular gate electric field to break the inversion symmetry in BLG, and a giant nonlocal response was observed as a result of the topological transport of the valley pseudospin. We further showed that the valley transport is fully tunable by external gates, and that the nonlocal signal persists up to room temperature and over long distances. These observations challenge contemporary understanding of topological transport in a gapped system, and the robust topological transport may lead to future valleytronic applications.