No Arabic abstract
The layer-based random-phase approximation is further developed to investigate electronic excitations in tri-layer ABC-stacked graphene. All the layer-dependent atomic interactions and Coulomb interactions are included in the dynamic charge screening. There exist rich and unique (momentum, frequency)-excitation phase diagrams, in which the complex single-particle excitations and five kinds of plasmon modes, are dominated by the unusual energy bands and doping carrier densities. The latter frequently experience the significant Landau damping due to the former, leading to the coexistence/destruction in the energy loss spectra. Specifically, the dispersion of the only acoustic plasmon in pristine case is dramatically changed from linear into quadratic even at very low doping.
We present a comparative measurement of the G-peak oscillations of phonon frequency, Raman intensity and linewidth in the Magneto-Raman scattering of optical E2g phonons in mechanically exfoliated ABA- and ABC-stacked trilayer graphene (TLG). Whereas in ABA-stacked TLG, we observe magnetophonon oscillations consistent with single-bilayer chiral band doublets, the features are flat for ABC-stacked TLG up to magnetic fields of 9 T. This suppression can be attributed to the enhancement of band chirality that compactifies the spectrum of Landau levels and modifies the magnetophonon resonance properties. The drastically different coupling behaviour between the electronic excitations and the E2g phonons in ABA- and ABC-stacked TLG reflects their different electronic band structures and the electronic Landau level transitions and thus can be another way to determine the stacking orders and to probe the stacking-order-dependent electronic structures. In addition, the sensitivity of the magneto-Raman scattering to the particular stacking order in few layers graphene highlights the important role of interlayer coupling in modifying the optical response properties in van der Waals layered materials.
The lower-symmetry trilayer AAB-stacked graphene exhibits rich electronic properties and thus diverse Coulomb excitations. Three pairs of unusual valence and conduction bands create nine available interband excitations for the undoped case, in which the imaginary (real) part of the polarizability shows 1D square root asymmetric peaks and 2D shoulder structures (pairs of antisymmetric peaks and logarithm type symmetric peaks). Moreover, the low frequency acoustic plasmon, being revealed as a prominent peak in the energy loss spectrum, can survive in a narrow gap system with the large-density-of-states from the valence band. This type of plasmon mode is similar to that in a narrow gap carbon nanotube. However, the decisive mechanism governing this plasmon is the intraband conduction state excitations. Its frequency, intensity and critical momentum exhibit a non-monotonic dependence on the Fermi energy. The well-defined electron-hole excitation boundaries and the higher frequency optical plasmons are transformed by varying the Fermi energy. There remain substantial differences between the electronic properties of trilayer AAB, ABC, AAA and ABA graphene stackings.
Magnetism is a prototypical phenomenon of quantum collective state, and has found ubiquitous applications in semiconductor technologies such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM). In conventional materials, it typically arises from the strong exchange interaction among the magnetic moments of d- or f-shell electrons. Magnetism, however, can also emerge in perfect lattices from non-magnetic elements. For instance, flat band systems with high density of states (DOS) may develop spontaneous magnetic ordering, as exemplified by the Stoner criterion. Here we report tunable magnetism in rhombohedral-stacked few-layer graphene (r-FLG). At small but finite doping (n~10^11 cm-2), we observe prominent conductance hysteresis and giant magnetoconductance that exceeds 1000% as a function of magnetic fields. Both phenomena are tunable by density and temperature, and disappears for n>10^12 cm-2 or T>5K. These results are confirmed by first principles calculations, which indicate the formation of a half-metallic state in doped r-FLG, in which the magnetization is tunable by electric field. Our combined experimental and theoretical work demonstrate that magnetism and spin polarization, arising from the strong electronic interactions in flat bands, emerge in a system composed entirely of carbon atoms. The electric field tunability of magnetism provides promise for spintronics and low energy device engineering.
Using infrared spectroscopy, we investigate bottom gated ABA-stacked trilayer graphene subject to an additional environment-induced p-type doping. We find that the Slonczewski-Weiss-McClure tight-binding model and the Kubo formula reproduce the gate voltage-modulated reflectivity spectra very accurately. This allows us to determine the charge densities and the potentials of the {pi}-band electrons on all graphene layers separately and to extract the interlayer permittivity due to higher energy bands.
ABC-stacked trilayer graphenes chiral band structure results in three ($n=0,1,2$) Landau level orbitals with zero kinetic energy. This unique feature has important consequences on the interaction driven states of the 12-fold degenerate (including spin and valley) N=0 Landau level. In particular, at many filling factors $ u_{T} =pm5,pm4,pm2,pm1$ a quantum phase transition from a quantum Hall liquid state to a triangular charge density wave occurs as a function of the single-particle induced LL orbital splitting $Delta_{LL}$. This phase transition should be characterized by a re-entrant integer quantum Hall effect with the Hall conductivity corresponding to the {it adjacent} interaction driven integer quantum Hall plateau.