Detection of infrared light is central to diverse applications in security, medicine, astronomy, materials science, and biology. Often different materials and detection mechanisms are employed to optimize performance in different spectral ranges. Graphene is a unique material with strong, nearly frequency-independent light-matter interaction from far infrared to ultraviolet, with potential for broadband photonics applications. Moreover, graphene's small electron-phonon coupling suggests that hot-electron effects may be exploited at relatively high temperatures for fast and highly sensitive detectors in which light energy heats only the small-specific-heat electronic system. Here we demonstrate such a hot-electron bolometer using bilayer graphene that is dual-gated to create a tunable bandgap and electron-temperature-dependent conductivity. The measured large electron-phonon heat resistance is in good agreement with theoretical estimates in magnitude and temperature dependence, and enables our graphene bolometer operating at a temperature of 5 K to have a low noise equivalent power (33 fW/Hz1/2). We employ a pump-probe technique to directly measure the intrinsic speed of our device, >1 GHz at 10 K.
We demonstrate that single layer graphene exhibits the electronic structure of a bilayer when it is connected to two gated bilayers. The energy gap characteristic for gated bilayer is induced in the single layer and it persists for distances separating the bilayers up to 20 nm. Most importantly, we report on the appearance of topologically protected gapless state localized in a single graphene layer when the distant bilayers differ in the stacking order. The one-dimensional current in the topological state flows in a single layer graphene, and this finding suggests a new exploitation of graphe…
We discuss the physics of the tunable bandgap in bilayer graphene with the gate voltage and doping. A comparison with experimental data obtained by Kuzmenko et al [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{80}, 165406 (2009)] demonstrates the good agreement.
Zigzag nanoribbons of monolayer graphene-like two-dimensional materials host spontaneous edge magnetism at the zigzag terminations, whose configuration controls the band gap. In this article, the edge magnetism of zigzag nanoribbons of bilayer hexagonal crystals are studied. The specific models of bilayer graphene and bilayer silicene are both studied. As the gated voltage increases, the total energy level, magnetic structure and band structures of the ground state and the first quasi-stable excited state are tuned. For certain region of the gated voltage, the band gaps of spin up and down are…
The resistance of dual-gated bilayer graphene is measured as a function of temperature and gating electric fields in the Corbino geometry which precludes edge transport. The temperature-dependent resistance is quantitatively described by a two channel conductance model including parallel thermal activation and variable range hopping channels, which gives the electric-field-dependent band gap whose magnitude is found to be in good agreement with infrared absorption experiments. Low temperature transport is similar to previous studies of dual-gated bilayer graphene with edges, suggesting that ed…
The electronic structure and optical response of electrically gated bilayer graphene are studied by first-principles approaches. We have obtained the induced band gap that is in good agreement with experiment when the applied electric field is less than 1.5 V/nm. The infrared optical absorbance is calculated within the single-particle excitation picture and its fine structures are presented. In addition, the calculated infrared optical absorbance is found to be strongly depending on stacking styles of bilayer graphene and the polarization direction of the incident light, which provides efficie…
We present transport measurements on a bilayer graphene sheet with homogeneous back gate and split top gate. The electronic transport data indicates the capability to direct electron flow through graphene nanostructures purely defined by electrostatic gating. By comparing the transconductance data recorded for different top gate geometries - continuous barrier and split-gate - the observed transport features for the split-gate can be attributed to interference effects inside the narrow opening.
We study the electronic transport properties of dual-gated bilayer graphene devices. We focus on the regime of low temperatures and high electric displacement fields, where we observe a clear exponential dependence of the resistance as a function of displacement field and density, accompanied by a strong non-linear behavior in the transport characteristics. The effective transport gap is typically two orders of magnitude smaller than the optical band gaps reported by infrared spectroscopy studies. Detailed temperature dependence measurements shed light on the different transport mechanisms in …
Gated bilayer graphene exhibits spin-degenerate gapless states with a topological character localized at stacking domain walls. These states allow for one-dimensional currents along the domain walls. We herein demonstrate that these topologically protected currents are spin -polarized and locked in a single layer when bilayer graphene contains stacking domain walls decorated with magnetic defects. The magnetic defects, which we model as π-vacancies, perturb the topological states but also lift their spin degeneracy. One gapless state survives the perturbation of these defects, and its spin pol…
We report on transport properties in dual-gated hexagonal boron nitride (hBN)/bilayer-graphene (BLG) superlattices. Here, BLG is nontwisted, i.e., plain. This paper focuses on the charge neutrality point (CNP) for a plain BLG. Under a perpendicular magnetic field, transitions between two insulating phases at the CNP are detected by varying a displacement field with the study on the resistance-temperature characteristics and the magnetoresistance. This work opens avenues for exploring the global phase diagram of the hBN/BLG superlattices beyond the CNP.
A Raman study of a back gated bilayer graphene sample is presented. The changes in the Fermi level induced by charge transfer splits the Raman G-band, hardening its higher component and softening the lower one. These two components are associated with the symmetric (S) and anti-symmetric vibration (AS) of the atoms in the two layers, the later one becoming Raman active due to inversion symmetry breaking. The phonon hardening and softening are explained by considering the selective coupling of the S and AS phonons with interband and intraband electron-hole pairs.
The photovoltaic and bolometric photoresponse in gapped bilayer graphene was investigated by optical and transport measurements. A pulse coincidence technique at 1.5 um was used to measure the response times as a function of temperature. The bolometric and photovoltaic response times were found to be identical implying that the photovoltaic response is also governed by hot electron thermal relaxation. Response times of tau ~ 100 - 20 ps were found for temperatures from 3 - 100 K. Above 10 K, the relaxation time was observed to be tau = 25 +/- 5 ps, independent of temperature within noise.
We show simultaneous p and n type carrier injection in bilayer graphene channel by varying the longitudinal bias across the channel and the top gate voltage. The top gate is applied electrochemically using solid polymer electrolyte and the gate capacitance is measured to be 1.5 $μF/cm^2$, a value about 125 times higher than the conventional SiO$_2$ back gate capacitance. Unlike the single layer graphene, the drain-source current does not saturate on varying the drain-source bias voltage. The energy gap opened between the valence and conduction bands using top and back gate geometry is estimate…
Coherent spin-dependent transport through a junction containing of Normal/Ferromagnetic/Normal bilayer graphene nanoribbon with zigzag edges is investigated by using Landauer formalism. In a more realistic set-up, the exchange field is induced by two ferromagnetic insulator strips deposited on the ribbon edges while a perpendicular electric field is applied by the top gated electrodes. Our results show that, for antiparallel configuration, a band gap is opened giving rise a semiconducting behavior, while for parallel configuration, the band structure has no band gap. As a result, a giant magne…
Electric transport of double gated bilayer graphene devices is studied as a function of charge density and bandgap. A top gate electrode can be used to control locally the Fermi level to create a pn junction between the double-gated and single-gated region. These bilayer graphene pn diodes are characterized by non-linear currents and directional current rectification, and we show the rectified direction of the source-drain voltage can be controlled by using gate voltages. A systematic study of the pn junction characteristics allows to extract a gate-dependent bandgap value which ranges from 0 …
The effects of Coulomb interactions on the electronic properties of bilayer graphene nanoribbons (BGNs) covered by a gate electrode are studied theoretically. The electron density distribution and the potential profile are calculated self-consistently within the Hartree approximation. A comparison to their single-particle counterparts reveals the effects of interactions and screening. Due to the finite width of the nanoribbon in combination with electronic repulsion, the gate-induced electrons tend to accumulate along the BGN edges where the potential assumes a sharp triangular shape. This has…
In this work we study the behavior of the optical phonon modes in bilayer graphene devices by applying top gate voltage, using Raman scattering. We observe the splitting of the Raman G band as we tune the Fermi level of the sample, which is explained in terms of mixing of the Raman (Eg) and infrared (Eu) phonon modes, due to different doping in the two layers. We theoretically analyze our data in terms of the bilayer graphene phonon self-energy which includes non-homogeneous charge carrier doping between the graphene layers. We show that the comparison between the experiment and theoretical mo…
The non-interacting energy spectrum of graphene and its bilayer counterpart consists of multiple degeneracies owing to the inherent spin, valley and layer symmetries. Interactions among charge carriers are expected to spontaneously break these symmetries, leading to gapped ordered states. In the quantum Hall regime these states are predicted to be ferromagnetic in nature whereby the system becomes spin polarized, layer polarized or both. In bilayer graphene, due to its parabolic dispersion, interaction-induced symmetry breaking is already expected at zero magnetic field. In this work, the unde…
We analyze the response of bilayer graphene to an external transverse electric field using a variational method. A previous attempt to do so in a recent paper by Falkovsky [Phys. Rev. B 80, 113413 (2009)] is shown to be flawed. Our calculation reaffirms the original results obtained by one of us [E. McCann, Phys. Rev. B 74, 161403(R) (2006)] by a different method. Finally, we generalize these original results to describe a dual-gated bilayer graphene device.
We discuss the effect of disorder on the band gap measured in bilayer graphene in optical and transport experiments. By calculating the optical conductivity and density of states using a microscopic model in the presence of disorder, we demonstrate that the gap associated with transport experiments is smaller than that associated with optical experiments. Intrinsic bilayer graphene has an optical conductivity in which the energy of the peaks associated with the interband transition are very robust against disorder and thus provide an estimate of the band gap. In contrast, extraction of the ban…
We study the magnetotransport properties of dual-gated graphene bilayers, in which the total density and layer density imbalance are independently controlled. As the bilayer is imbalanced we observe the emergence of a quantum Hall state (QHS) at filling factor $ν=0$ evinced by a plateau in the Hall conductivity, consistent with the opening of a gap between the electron and hole bands. By varying the layer density imbalance at fixed total density, we observe a suppression of the QHS at filling factors $ν=8$ and $ν=12$ when the layer densities are balanced, an observation at variance with theore…
Understanding the origin of hysteresis in the channel resistance from top gated graphene transistors is important for transistor applications. Capacitance - voltage measurements across the gate oxide on top gated bilayer graphene show hysteresis with a charging and discharging time constant of ~100 μs. However, the measured capacitance across the graphene channel does not show any hysteresis, but shows an abrupt jump at a high channel voltage due to the emergence of an order, indicating that the origin of hysteresis between gate and source is due to charge traps present in the gate oxide and g…
We study ballistic transport in periodically gated bilayer graphene as a candidate for a 2D electronic metamaterial. Our calculations use the equilibrium Green function formalism and take into account quantum corrections to charge density changes induced by a periodically modulated top gate voltage. Our results reveal an intriguing interference-like pattern, similar to that of a Fabry-Perot interferometer, in the resistance map as a function of the voltage $V_{BG}$ applied to the extended bottom gate and $V_{TG}$ applied to the periodic top gate.
We study an epitaxial graphene monolayer with bilayer inclusions via magnetotransport measurements and scanning gate microscopy at low temperatures. We find that bilayer inclusions can be metallic or insulating depending on the initial and gated carrier density. The metallic bilayers act as equipotential shorts for edge currents, while closely spaced insulating bilayers guide the flow of electrons in the monolayer constriction, which was locally gated using a scanning gate probe.
Thermoelectric power of a material, typically governed by its band structure and carrier density, can be varied by chemical doping that is often restricted by solubility of the dopant. Materials showing large thermoelectric power are useful for many industrial applications, such as the heat-to-electricity conversion and the thermoelectric cooling device. Here we show a full electric field tuning of thermoelectric power in a dual-gated bilayer graphene device resulting from the opening of a band-gap by applying a perpendicular electric field on bilayer graphene. We uncover a large enhancement i…
We have performed low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements on exfoliated bilayer graphene on SiO2. By varying the back gate voltage we observed a linear shift of the Dirac point and an opening of a band gap due to the perpendicular electric field. In addition to observing a shift in the Dirac point, we also measured its spatial dependence using spatially resolved scanning tunneling spectroscopy. The spatial variation of the Dirac point was not correlated with topographic features and therefore we attribute its shift to random charged impurities.
Double-gated graphene devices provide an important platform for understanding electrical and optical properties of graphene. Here we present transport measurements of single layer, bilayer and trilayer graphene devices with suspended top gates. In zero magnetic fields, we observe formation of pnp junctions with tunable polarity and charge densities, as well as a tunable band gap in bilayer graphene and a tunable band overlap in trilayer graphene. In high magnetic fields, the devices' conductance are quantized at integer and fractional values of conductance quantum, and the data are in good agr…
Superconductors at the atomic two-dimensional (2D) limit are the focus of an enduring fascination in the condensed matter community. This is because, with reduced dimensions, the effects of disorders, fluctuations, and correlations in superconductors become particularly prominent at the atomic 2D limit; thus such superconductors provide opportunities to tackle tough theoretical and experimental challenges. Here, based on the observation of ultrathin 2D superconductivity in mono- and bilayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS$_2$) with electric-double-layer (EDL) gating, we found that the critical sheet…
We report the discovery of a strong and tunable spin lifetime anisotropy with excellent spin lifetimes up to 7.8 ns in dual-gated bilayer graphene. Remarkably, this realizes the manipulation of spins in graphene by electrically-controlled spin-orbit fields, which is unexpected due to graphene's weak intrinsic spin-orbit coupling. We utilize both the in-plane magnetic field Hanle precession and oblique Hanle precession measurements to directly compare the lifetimes of out-of-plane vs. in-plane spins. We find that near the charge neutrality point, the application of a perpendicular electric fiel…
By employing the first-principles GW-Bethe-Salpeter Equation (BSE) simulation, we obtain, for the first time, the accurate quasiparticle (QP) band gap, optical absorption spectra and their dependence on the gate field of gated bilayer graphene (GBLG). Many-electron effects are shown to be extremely important to understand these excited-state properties; enhanced electron-electron interactions dramatically enlarge the QP band gap; infrared optical absorption spectra are dictated by bright bound excitons. Our results well explain recent experiments and satisfyingly solve the puzzle about the inc…
The tight-binding model of a graphene bilayer is used to find the gap between the conduction and valence bands, as a function of both the gate voltage and as the doping by donors or acceptors. The total Hartree energy is minimized and the equation for the gap is obtained. This equation for the ratio of the gap to the chemical potential is determined only by the screening constant. Thus the gap is strictly proportional to the gate voltage or the carrier concentration in the absence of donors or acceptors. In the opposite case, where the donors or acceptors are present, the gap demonstrates the …
The elimination of extrinsic sources of spin relaxation is key in realizing the exceptional intrinsic spin transport performance of graphene. Towards this, we study charge and spin transport in bilayer graphene-based spin valve devices fabricated in a new device architecture which allows us to make a comparative study by separately investigating the roles of substrate and polymer residues on spin relaxation. First, the comparison between spin valves fabricated on SiO2 and BN substrates suggests that substrate-related charged impurities, phonons and roughness do not limit the spin transport in …
Bilayer silicene has richer physical properties than bilayer graphene due to its buckled structure together with its trigonal symmetric structure. The buckled structure arises from a large ionic radius of silicon, and the trigonal symmetry from a particular way of hopping between two silicenes. It is a topologically trivial insulator since it carries a trivial $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$ topological charge. Nevertheless, its physical properties are more akin to those of a topological insulator than those of a band insulator. Indeed, a bilayer silicene nanoribbon has edge modes which are almost gapless an…
We present a systematic study on the influence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling, interlayer potential difference and exchange field on the topological properties of bilayer graphene. In the presence of only Rashba spin-orbit coupling and interlayer potential difference, the band gap opening due to broken out-of-plane inversion symmetry offers new possibilities of realizing tunable topological phase transitions by varying an external gate voltage. We find a two-dimensional $Z_2$ topological insulator phase and a quantum valley Hall phase in $AB$-stacked bilayer graphene and obtain their effective …
Domain wall in bilayer graphene with Rashba spin-orbital coupling and staggered sublattice potentials, at the interface between two domains with different gated voltages, is studied. Varying type of zero-line modes are identified, including zero-line mode with pure spin filtering effect. The Y-shape current partition at the junction among three different domains are proposed.
We demonstrate that the low-frequency resistance fluctuations, or noise, in bilayer graphene is strongly connected to its band structure, and displays a minimum when the gap between the conduction and valence band is zero. Using double-gated bilayer graphene devices we have tuned the zero gap and charge neutrality points independently, which offers a versatile mechanism to investigate the low-energy band structure, charge localization and screening properties of bilayer graphene.
We explore the potential of bilayer graphene as a cryogenic microwave photodetector by studying the microwave absorption in fully suspended clean bilayer graphene pn junctions in the frequency range of $1-5$ GHz at a temperature of 8 K. We observe a distinct photocurrent signal if the device is gated into the pn regime, while there is almost no signal for unipolar doping in either the nn or pp regimes. Most surprisingly, the photocurrent strongly peaks when one side of the junction is gated to the Dirac point (charge-neutrality point CNP), while the other remains in a highly doped state. This …
We present a novel measurement approach which combines the electrical characterization of solution-gated field effect transistors based on epitaxial bilayer graphene on 4H-SiC (0001) with simultaneous Raman spectroscopy. By changing the gate voltage, we observed Raman signatures related to the resonant electron-phonon coupling. An analysis of these Raman bands enabled the extraction of the geometrical capacitance of the system and an accurate calculation of the Fermi levels for bilayer graphene. An intentional application of higher gate voltages allowed us to trigger electrochemical reactions,…
We report transport data obtained for a double-gated bilayer graphene quantum dot. In Coulomb blockade measurements, the gate dielectric Cytop(TM) is found to provide remarkable electronic stability even at cryogenic temperatures. Moreover, we demonstrate gate manipulation with square shaped voltage pulses at frequencies up to 100 MHz and show that the signal amplitude is not affected by the presence of the capacitively coupled back gate.
We develop a microscopic theory of a strong electromagnetic field interaction with gated bilayer graphene. Quantum kinetic equations for density matrix are obtained using a tight binding approach within second quantized Hamiltonian in an intense laser field. We show that adiabatically changing the gate potentials with time may produce (at resonant photon energy) a full inversion of the electron population with high density between valence and conduction bands. In the linear regime, excitonic absorption of an electromagnetic radiation in a graphene monolayer with opened energy gap is also studi…
We investigate the transport properties of double-gated bilayer graphene nanoribbons at room temperature. The devices were fabricated using conventional CMOS-compatible processes. By analyzing the dependence of the resistance at the charge neutrality point as a function of the electric field applied perpendicular to the graphene surface, we show that a band gap in the density of states opens, reaching an effective value of ~sim50 meV. This demonstrates the potential of bilayer graphene as FET channel material in a conventional CMOS environment.
We calculate the spin relaxation time of mobile electrons due to spin precession between random impurity scattering (D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism) in electrically gated bilayer graphene analytically and numerically. Due to the trigonal warping of the bandstructure, the spin relaxation time exhibits an interesting non-monotonic behavior as a function of both the Fermi energy and the interlayer bias potential. Our results are in good agreement with recent four-probe measurements of the spin relaxation time in bilayer graphene and indicate the possibility of an electrically-switched spin device.
We report on infrared spectroscopy of bilayer graphene integrated in gated structures. We observed a significant asymmetry in the optical conductivity upon electrostatic doping of electrons and holes. We show that this finding arises from a marked asymmetry between the valence and conduction bands, which is mainly due to the inequivalence of the two sublattices within the graphene layer. From the conductivity data, the energy difference of the two sublattices is determined.
In this work, we investigate the intrinsic limits of subthreshold slope in a dual gated bilayer graphene transistor using a coupled self-consistent Poisson-bandstructure solver. We benchmark the solver by matching the bias dependent bandgap results obtained from the solver against published experimental data. We show that the intrinsic bias dependence of the electronic structure and the self-consistent electrostatics limit the subthreshold slope obtained in such a transistor well above the Boltzmann limit of 60mV/decade at room temperature, but much below the results experimentally shown till …
Graphene-based heterostructures display a variety of phenomena that are strongly tunable by electrostatic local gates. Monolayer graphene (MLG) exhibits tunable surface plasmon polaritons, as revealed by scanning nano-infrared experiments. In bilayer graphene (BLG), an electronic gap is induced by a perpendicular displacement field. Gapped BLG is predicted to display unusual effects such as plasmon amplification and domain wall plasmons with significantly larger lifetime than MLG. Furthermore, a variety of correlated electronic phases highly sensitive to displacement fields have been observed …
Gated trilayer graphene exhibits energy gap in its most stable ABC stacking. Here we show that when the stacking order changes from ABC to CBA, three gapless states appear in each valley. The states are topologically protected and their number is related to the change of the valley Chern number across the stacking boundary. The stacking change is achieved by corrugation or delamination in the top and bottom layers, which simultaneously yields two AB/BA stacking domain walls in the pairs of adjacent layers (in bilayers). This in turn causes that for some gate voltages two pairs of topological r…
We study the electronic transport properties of a dual-gated bilayer graphene nanodevice via first principles calculations. We investigate the electric current as a function of gate length and temperature. Under the action of an external electrical field we show that even for gate lengths up 100 Ang., a non zero current is exhibited. The results can be explained by the presence of a tunneling regime due the remanescent states in the gap. We also discuss the conditions to reach the charge neutrality point in a system free of defects and extrinsic carrier doping.
We show that gated bilayer graphene hosts a strong topological insulator (TI) phase in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit (SO) coupling. We find that gated bilayer graphene under preserved time-reversal symmetry is a quantum valley Hall insulator for small Rashba SO coupling $λ_{\mathrm{R}}$, and transitions to a strong TI when $λ_{\mathrm{R}} > \sqrt{U^2+t_\bot^2}$, where $U$ and $t_\bot$ are respectively the interlayer potential and tunneling energy. Different from a conventional quantum spin Hall state, the edge modes of our strong TI phase exhibit both spin and valley filtering, and thus sh…
The electronic structure of multilayer graphenes depends strongly on the number of layers as well as the stacking order. Here we explore the electronic transport of purely ABA-stacked trilayer graphenes in a dual-gated field-effect device configuration. We find that both the zero-magnetic-field transport and the quantum Hall effect at high magnetic fields are distinctly different from the monolayer and bilayer graphenes, and that they show electron-hole asymmetries that are strongly suggestive of a semimetallic band overlap. When the ABA trilayers are subjected to an electric field perpendicul…
Landau level gaps are important parameters for understanding electronic interactions and symmetry-broken processes in bilayer graphene (BLG). Here we present transport spectroscopy measurements of LL gaps in double-gated suspended BLG with high mobilities in the quantum Hall regime. By using bias as a spectroscopic tool, we measure the gap Δ for the quantum Hall (QH) state at filling factor ν={\pm}4 and -2. The single-particle gap for ν=4 scales linearly with magnetic field B and is independent of the out-of-plane electric field E. For the symmetry-broken ν=-2 state, the measured values of gap…
Equilibration of quantum Hall edges is studied in a high quality dual gated bilayer graphene device in both unipolar and bipolar regime when all the degeneracies of the zero energy Landau level are completely lifted. We find that in the unipolar regime when the filling factor under the top gate region is higher than the back gate filling factor, the equilibration is partial based on their spin polarization. However, the complete mixing of the edge states is observed in the bipolar regime irrespective of their spin configurations due to the Landau level collapsing at the sharp pn junction in ou…
We analyze the electronic properties of bilayer graphene with Bernal stacking and a low concentration of adatoms. Assuming that the host bilayer lies on top of a substrate, we consider the case where impurities are adsorbed only on the upper layer. We describe non-magnetic impurities as a single orbital hybridized with carbon's pz states. The effect of impurity doping on the local density of states with and without a gated electric field perpendicular to the layers is analyzed. We look for Anderson localization in the different regimes and estimate the localization length. In the biased system…
