Graphene has exceptional optical, mechanical and electrical properties, making it an emerging material for novel optoelectronics, photonics and for flexible transparent electrode applications. However, the relatively high sheet resistance of graphene is a major constrain for many of these applications. Here we propose a new approach to achieve low sheet resistance in large-scale CVD monolayer graphene using non-volatile ferroelectric polymer gating. In this hybrid structure, large-scale graphene is heavily doped up to 3{\times}1013 cm-2 by non-volatile ferroelectric dipoles, yielding a low sheet resistance of 120 Ω{\Box} at ambient conditions. The graphene-ferroelectric transparent conductors (GFeTCs) exhibit more than 95% transmittance from the visible to the near infrared range owing to the highly transparent nature of the ferroelectric polymer. Together with its excellent mechanical flexibility, chemical inertness and the simple fabrication process of ferroelectric polymers, the proposed GFeTCs represent a new route towards large-scale graphene based transparent electrodes and optoelectronics.
Graphene has been used recently as a replacement for indium tin oxide (ITO) for the transparent electrode of an organic photovoltaic device. Due to its limited supply, ITO is considered as a limiting factor for the commercialization of organic solar cells. We explored the use of large-area graphene grown on copper by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and then transferred to a glass substrate as an alternative transparent electrode. The transferred film was shown by scanning Raman spectroscopy measurements to consist of >90% single layer graphene. Optical spectroscopy measurements showed that the…
A ferroelectric tunnel barrier in between two ferromagnetic electrodes (multiferroic tunnel junction, MFTJ), is one of the most promising concepts for future microelectronic devices. In parallel, Hafnia based ferroelectrics are showing great potential for device miniaturization down to the nanoscale. Here we utilize ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO) with thickness of only 2 nm, epitaxially grown on La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO) ferromagnetic electrodes, as a large band-gap insulating barrier integrated in MFTJs with cobalt top electrodes. As previously reported for other MFTJs with similar electrodes, …
We report that 30-inch scale multiple roll-to-roll transfer and wet chemical doping considerably enhance the electrical properties of the graphene films grown on roll-type Cu substrates by chemical vapor deposition. The resulting graphene films shows a sheet resistance as low as ~30 Ohm/sq at ~90 % transparency which is superior to commercial transparent electrodes such as indium tin oxides (ITO). The monolayer of graphene shows sheet resistances as low as ~125 Ohm/sq with 97.4% optical transmittance and half-integer quantum Hall effect, indicating the high-quality of these graphene films. As …
Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), composed of two ferromagnetic electrodes separated by a thin insulating barrier layer, are currently used in spintronic devices, such as magnetic sensors and magnetic random access memories. Recently, driven by demonstrations of ferroelectricity at the nanoscale, thin-film ferroelectric barriers were proposed to extend the functionality of MTJs. Due to the sensitivity of conductance to the magnetization alignment of the electrodes (tunnelling magnetoresistance) and the polarization orientation in the ferroelectric barrier (tunnelling electroresistance), these …
Based on the structure predicted in a ferroelectric tunnel junction in the resent density functional theory study, we investigate the electron transport through the FTJ with asymmetric interfaces, i.e., one interface dipole is pinned and the other interface dipole is switchable. Tuneling electroresistance can be induced due to the nonswitchable interface dipole in FTJs with symmetric electrodes. Compared with the dependence relationship between TER and the polarization of switchable interface, TER is not sensitive to the variation of the polarization of pinned interface. A large TER can be ach…
Metal meshes have emerged as an important class of flexible transparent electrodes. We report on the characteristics of a new class of asymmetric meshes, tiled using a recently-discovered family of pentagons. Micron-scale meshes were fabricated on flexible polyethylene terephthalate substrates via optical lithography, metal evaporation (Ti 10 nm, Pt 50 nm) and lift-off. Three different designs were assessed, each with the same tessellation pattern and linewidth (5 micron), but with different sizes of the fundamental pentagonal unit. The designs corresponded to areal coverage of the metal patte…
Using a simple quantum-mechanical model, we explore a tunneling anisotropic magnetoresistance (TAMR) effect in ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) with a ferromagnetic electrode and a ferroelectric barrier layer, which spontaneous polarization gives rise to the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling (SOC). For realistic parameters of the model, we predict sizable TAMR measurable experimentally. For asymmetric FTJs, which electrodes have different work functions, the built-in electric field affects the SOC parameters and leads to TAMR dependent on ferroelectric polarization direction. The…
Flexible, free-standing transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) with simultaneously tunable transmittances up to 98% and sheet resistances down to 11 Ω/sq were prepared by a facile spray-coating method of silver nanowires (AgNWs) onto dry-spun multiwall carbon nanotube (MWNT) aerogels. Counterintuitively, the transmittance of the hybrid electrodes can be increased as the mass density of AgNWs within the MWNT aerogels increase, however, the final achievable transmittance depends on the initial transparency of the MWNT aerogels. At the same time, a strong decrease in sheet resistance is obtaine…
We present a theoretical study of the transport characteristics of molecular junctions, where first-row diatomic molecules are attached to (001) gold and platinum electrodes. We find that the conductance of all of these junctions is of the order of the conductance quantum unit $G_0$, spelling out that they belong to the transparent regime. We further find that the transmission coefficients show wide plateaus as a function of the energy, instead of the usual sharp resonances that signal the molecular levels in the tunneling regime. We use Caroli's model to show that this is a rather generic pro…
We study tunnel junctions consisting of a two-dimensional ferroelectric (FE) material sandwiched between graphene electrodes. We formulate a theory for the interplay of the FE polarization and induced free charges in such devices, taking into account quantum capacitance effects. We predict a gate-sensitive FE voltage difference across the device, which can be measured using electrostatic force microscopy. Incorporating this electrostatic theory in the tunneling current-voltage characteristics, we identify a resonance peak associated with aligned Dirac cones as a highly sensitive probe of the F…
Proximity Ferroelectricity in Compositionally Graded Structures
Frantsevich Institute for Problems in Materials Science, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine（乌克兰国家科学院弗拉采维奇材料科学问题研究所）；Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine（乌克兰国家科学院物理研究所）；University of Tennessee（田纳西大学）；Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）
We consider $N$ circles of equal radii, $r$, having their centers randomly placed within a square domain $\mathcal{D}$ of size $L \times L$ with periodic boundary conditions ($\mathcal{D} \in \mathbb{R}^2$). When two or more circles intersect each other, each circle is divided by the intersection points into several arcs. We found the exact length distribution of the arcs. In the limiting case of dense systems and large size of the domain $\mathcal{D}$ ($L \to \infty$ in such a way that the number of circle per unit area, $n=N/L^2$, is constant), the arc distribution approaches the probability…
The outstanding electrical and optical properties of graphene make it an excellent alternative as a transparent electrode. Here we demonstrate the application of graphene as collector material in internal photoemission (IPE) spectroscopy; enabling the direct observation of both electron and hole injections at a Si/Al2O3 interface and successfully overcoming the long-standing difficulty of detecting holes injected from a semiconductor emitter in IPE measurements. The observed electron and hole barrier heights are 3.5 eV and 4.1 eV, respectively. Thus the bandgap of Al2O3 can be further deduced …
Organic ferroelectric layers sandwiched between the graphene sheets are presented as a model of the solar cell. The investigated systems display many advantageous properties: 1) the cascade energy-levels alignment, 2) simultaneous donor and acceptor character depending on the charge-carrier direction, 3) the charge-transfer excitonic type, 4) the induced polarization of the electrodes, leading to a substantial work-function change of the anode and cathode - around +/-1.5 eV, respectively.
We present our recent electronic transport results in top-gated InAs/GaSb quantum well hybrid structures with superconducting Ta electrodes. We show that the transport across the InAs-Ta junction depends largely on the interfacial transparency, exhibiting distinct zero-bias behavior. For a relatively resistive interface a broad conductance peak is observed at zero bias. When a transparent InAs-Ta interface is achieved, a zero-bias conductance dip appears with two coherent-peak-like features forming at bias voltages corresponding to the superconducting gap of Ta. The conductance spectra of the …
Here we present the theory of the conductivity of pn junction (pnJ) in graphene channel, placed on ferroelectric substrate, caused by ferroelectric domain wall (FDW) for the case of arbitrary current regime: from ballistic to diffusive one. We calculated the ratio of the pnJ conductions for opposite polarities of voltages, applied to source and drain electrodes of the channel,G+/G- as the function of the graphene channel length L, electron mean free path λ and ferroelectric substrate permittivity. We have demonstrated, that the small values of G+/G-(0.1 and smaller), which correspond to effici…
In tunnel junctions with ferroelectric barriers, switching the polarization direction modifies the electrostatic potential profile and the associated average tunnel barrier height. This results in strong changes of the tunnel transmission and associated resistance. The information readout in ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) is thus resistive and non-destructive, which is an advantage compared to the case of conventional ferroelectric memories (FeRAMs). Initially, endurance limitation (i.e. fatigue) was the main factor hampering the industrialization of FeRAMs. Systematic investigations of…
It is shown that apart from well-known factors, like temperature, substrate, and edge reconstruction effects, also the presence of external contacts is destructive for the formation of magnetic moments at the edges of graphene nanoribbons. The edge magnetism gradually decreases when graphene/electrode interfaces become more and more transparent for electrons. In addition to the graphene/electrode coupling strength, also the aspect ratio parameter, i.e. a width/length ratio of the graphene nanoribbon, is crucial for the suppression of edge magnetism. The present theory uses a tight-binding meth…
