Photo-thermionic effect in vertical graphene heterostructures
arXiv:1601.04197 · doi:10.1038/ncomms12174
Abstract
Finding alternative optoelectronic mechanisms that overcome the limitations of conventional semiconductor devices is paramount for detecting and harvesting low-energy photons. A highly promising approach is to drive a current from the thermal energy added to the free-electron bath as a result of light absorption. Successful implementation of this strategy requires a broadband absorber where carriers interact among themselves more strongly than with phonons, as well as energy-selective contacts to extract the excess electronic heat. Here we show that graphene-WSe2-graphene heterostructure devices offer this possibility through the photo-thermionic effect: the absorbed photon energy in graphene is efficiently transferred to the electron bath, leading to a thermalized hot carrier distribution. Carriers with energy higher than the Schottky barrier between graphene and WSe2 can be emitted over the barrier, thus creating photocurrent. We experimentally demonstrate that the photo-thermionic effect enables detection of sub-bandgap photons, while being size-scalable, electrically tunable, broadband and ultrafast.
References in corpus (9)
- Boron nitride substrates for high-quality graphene electronics
- The optical conductivity of graphene in the visible region of the spectrum
- Photo-excitation Cascade and Multiple Carrier Generation in Graphene
- On-chip integrated, silicon-graphene plasmonic Schottky photodetector, with high responsivity and avalanche photogain
- Ideal Graphene/Silicon Schottky Junction Diodes
- Supercollision cooling in undoped graphene
- Electron Thermionic Emission from Graphene and a Thermionic Energy Converter
- Cooling of photoexcited carriers in graphene by internal and substrate phonons
- Thermionic Emission and Negative dI/dV in Photoactive Graphene Heterostructures
Cited by in corpus (27)
- Universal Scaling Laws in Schottky Heterostructures Based on Two-Dimensional Materials
- Hot carriers in graphene -- fundamentals and applications
- Ultrafast Graphene Light Emitter
- Long-Lived Charge Separation Following Pump-Energy Dependent Ultrafast Charge Transfer in Graphene/WS Heterostructures
- Giant superlinear power dependence of photocurrent based on layered TaNiS photodetector
- 2D condensate of electrons and holes in ultrathin MoTe photocells
- Generalized high-energy thermionic electron injection at graphene interface
- Energy dissipation in van der Waals two-dimensional devices
- Performance analysis of photodetectors based on 2D materials and heterostructures
- Picosecond energy transfer in a transition metal dichalcogenide-graphene heterostructure revealed by transient Raman spectroscopy
- Adiabatic amplification of plasmons and demons in 2D systems
- Theory of photoexcited and thermionic emission across a two-dimensional graphene-semiconductor Schottky junction
- Attosecond-fast internal photoemission
- Universal model for electron thermal-field emission from two-dimensional semimetals
- Room temperature infrared photodetectors with hybrid structure based on 2D materials
- Ultrafast photocurrent and absorption microscopy of few-layer TMD devices isolate rate-limiting dynamics driving fast and efficient photoresponse
- Solid State Thermionic Power Generators: an analytical analysis in the nonlinear regime
- Heat transfer at the van der Waals interface between graphene and NbSe2
- Comprehensive Energy Balance Analysis of Photon-Enhanced Thermionic Power Generation Considering Concentrated Solar Absorption Distribution
- Photocarrier thermalization bottleneck in graphene
- Designing Few-layer Graphene Schottky Contact Solar Cell: Theoretical Efficiency Limits and Parametric Optimization
- Heat localization through reduced dimensionality
- Detection of cyclotron resonance using photo-induced thermionic emission at graphene/MoS2 van der Waals interface
- Light-matter interactions in layered materials and heterostructures: from moiré physics and magneto-optical effects to ultrafast dynamics and hybrid meta-photonics
- Ultrafast electronic heat dissipation through surface-to-bulk Coulomb coupling in quantum materials
- Visible and infrared photocurrent enhancement in a graphene-silicon Schottky photodetector through surface-states and electric field engineering
- Energy dissipation mechanism revealed by spatially resolved Raman thermometry of graphene/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructure devices