Competing Channels for Hot-Electron Cooling in Graphene

作者:Ma Qiong*; Gabor Nathaniel M; Andersen Trond I; Nair Nityan L; Watanabe Kenji; Taniguchi Takashi; Jarillo Herrero Pablo
来源:Physical Review Letters, 2014, 112(24): 247401.
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.247401

摘要

We report on temperature-dependent photocurrent measurements of high-quality dual-gated monolayer graphene p-n junction devices. A photothermoelectric effect governs the photocurrent response in our devices, allowing us to track the hot-electron temperature and probe hot-electron cooling channels over a wide temperature range (4 to 300 K). At high temperatures (T > T*), we found that both the peak photocurrent and the hot spot size decreased with temperature, while at low temperatures (T < T*), we found the opposite, namely that the peak photocurrent and the hot spot size increased with temperature. This nonmonotonic temperature dependence can be understood as resulting from the competition between two hot-electron cooling pathways: (a) (intrinsic) momentum-conserving normal collisions that dominates at low temperatures and (b) (extrinsic) disorder-assisted supercollisions that dominates at high temperatures. Gate control in our high-quality samples allows us to resolve the two processes in the same device for the first time. The peak temperature T* depends on carrier density and disorder concentration, thus allowing for an unprecedented way of controlling graphene's photoresponse.

  • 出版日期2014-6-19