Electrical Detection of Single Graphene Plasmons
arXiv:1805.02118 · doi:10.1021/acsnano.6b04139
Abstract
Plasmons --the collective oscillations of electrons in conducting materials-- play a pivotal role in nanophotonics because of their ability to couple electronic and photonic degrees of freedom. In particular, plasmons in graphene --the atomically thin carbon material-- offer strong spatial confinement and long lifetimes, accompanied by extraordinary optoelectronic properties derived from its peculiar electronic band structure. Understandably, this material has generated great expectations for its application to enhanced integrated devices. However, an efficient scheme for detecting graphene plasmons remains a challenge. Here we show that extremely compact graphene nanostructures are capable of realizing on-chip electrical detection of single plasmons. Specifically, we predict a twofold increase in the electrical current across a graphene nanostructure junction caused by the excitation of a single plasmon. This effect, which is due to the increase in electron temperature following plasmon decay, should persist during a picosecond time interval characteristic of electron-gas relaxation. We further show that a broad spectral detection range is accessible either by electrically doping the junction or by varying the size of the nanostructure. The proposed graphene plasmometer could find application as a basic component of future optics-free integrated nanoplasmonic devices.
References in corpus (24)
- The electronic properties of graphene
- Density functional method for nonequilibrium electron transport
- Ultrafast graphene photodetector
- Plasmonics in graphene at infra-red frequencies
- Gate-tuning of graphene plasmons revealed by infrared nano-imaging
- Optical nano-imaging of gate-tuneable graphene plasmons
- Dielectric function, screening, and plasmons in 2D graphene
- Graphene Plasmonics: Challenges and Opportunities
- Manipulating infrared photons using plasmons in transparent graphene superlattices
- Dynamical polarization of graphene at finite doping
- Hot Carrier-Assisted Intrinsic Photoresponse in Graphene
- Highly confined low-loss plasmons in graphene-boron nitride heterostructures
- Mid-infrared plasmons in scaled graphene nanostructures
- Strong Plasmonic Enhancement of Photovoltage in Graphene
- Measurement of Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics in Epitaxial Graphene
- Photo-excitation Cascade and Multiple Carrier Generation in Graphene
- Infrared nanoscopy of Dirac plasmons at the graphene-SiO2 interface
- Carrier dynamics in epitaxial graphene close to the Dirac point
- Magnetic field tuning of terahertz Dirac plasmons in graphene
- Generation of photovoltage in graphene on a femtosecond time scale through efficient carrier heating
- Extraordinary nonlinear plasmonics in graphene nanoislands
- On-Chip Single Plasmon Detection
- Optical properties of current carrying molecular wires
- Manipulating the Interaction between Localized and Delocalized Surface Plasmon Polaritons in Graphene