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Strong Coulomb drag and broken symmetry in double-layer graphene

Nature Physics volume 8, pages 896–901 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Coulomb drag is a frictional coupling between electric currents flowing in spatially separated conducting layers. It is caused by interlayer electron–electron interactions. Previously, only the regime of weak (d≫l) to intermediate (d∼l) coupling could be studied experimentally, where dis the interlayer separation and l is the characteristic distance between charge carriers. Here we use graphene–boron-nitride heterostructures with d down to 1 nm to probe Coulomb drag in the limit d≪l such that the two Dirac liquids effectively nest within the same plane, but can still be tuned and measured independently. The strongly interacting regime reveals many unexpected features. In particular, although drag vanishes because of electron–hole symmetry when either layer is neutral, we often find drag strongest when both layers are neutral. Under this circumstance, drag is positive in zero magnetic field but changes its sign and rapidly grows in strength with field. The drag remains strong at room temperature. The broken electron–hole symmetry is attributed to mutual polarization of closely spaced interacting layers.

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Figure 1: Coulomb drag in double-layer graphene heterostructures in zero magnetic field.
Figure 2: Functional dependences of Coulomb drag away from the neutrality point.
Figure 3: Broken symmetry in neutral double-layer graphene.

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Change history

  • 19 October 2012

    In the version of this Article originally published online, the unit on the y axis of Fig. 3c was incorrect, it should have read "ρdrag (Ω)". This error has been corrected in all versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Levitov, M. Titov and A. Castro Neto for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the Royal Society, the Körber Foundation, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK), the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

    R. V. Gorbachev, A. K. Geim, I. V. Grigorieva & L. A. Ponomarenko

  2. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

    A. K. Geim, K. S. Novoselov, I. V. Grigorieva, S. V. Morozov & L. A. Ponomarenko

  3. Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud University of Nijmegen, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    M. I. Katsnelson & T. Tudorovskiy

  4. Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA

    A. H. MacDonald

  5. Institute for Microelectronics Technology, 142432 Chernogolovka, Russia

    S. V. Morozov

  6. National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan

    K. Watanabe & T. Taniguchi

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  1. R. V. Gorbachev
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Contributions

L.A.P., R.V.G. and A.K.G. devised the project. K.W. and T.Ta. provided hBN crystals. R.V.G. designed and fabricated the heterostructures. L.A.P. carried out measurements and analysed the results. M.I.K., T.Tu. and A.H.M. provided theoretical support. A.K.G. wrote the paper. M.I.K. and T.Tu drafted the theory part of the Supplementary Information. K.S.N., I.V.G. and S.V.M. helped with experiments and/or writing the paper. All authors contributed to discussions.

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Correspondence to A. K. Geim or L. A. Ponomarenko.

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Gorbachev, R., Geim, A., Katsnelson, M. et al. Strong Coulomb drag and broken symmetry in double-layer graphene. Nature Phys 8, 896–901 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2441

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