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Photocurrent measurements of supercollision cooling in graphene

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 103–108 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The cooling of hot electrons in graphene is the critical process underlying the operation of exciting new graphene-based optoelectronic and plasmonic devices, but the nature of this cooling is controversial. We extract the hot-electron cooling rate near the Fermi level by using graphene as a novel photothermal thermometer that measures the electron temperature (T(t)) as it cools dynamically. We find the photocurrent generated from graphene p–n junctions is well described by the energy dissipation rate CdT/dt = −A(T3−Tl3), where the heat capacity is C = α T and Tl is the base lattice temperature. These results are in disagreement with predictions of electron–phonon emission in a disorder-free graphene system, but in excellent quantitative agreement with recent predictions of a disorder-enhanced supercollision cooling mechanism. We find that the supercollision model provides a complete and unified picture of energy loss near the Fermi level over the wide range of electronic (15 to ∼ 3,000 K) and lattice (10–295 K) temperatures investigated.

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Figure 1: Hot-electron cooling by acoustic phonons.
Figure 2: Photocurrent set-up, a time-resolved graphene thermometer.
Figure 3: PC response obeys SC power laws.
Figure 4: Extracting the hot-electron relaxation time.
Figure 5: SC model predicts TPC dependence on Tl.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science (KIC), AFOSR (FA 9550-10-1-0410), by the NSF through the Center for Nanoscale Systems and by the MARCO Focused Research Center on Materials, Structures, and Devices. We thank J. Song, K. McGill and J. Kevek for their helpful contributions. Device fabrication was performed at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility/National Nanofabrication Infrastructure Network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

    Matt W. Graham, Su-Fei Shi, Daniel C. Ralph & Paul L. McEuen

  2. Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

    Matt W. Graham, Su-Fei Shi, Daniel C. Ralph, Jiwoong Park & Paul L. McEuen

  3. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

    Jiwoong Park

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  1. Matt W. Graham
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Contributions

The experiment was built by M.W.G. and measurements performed by M.W.G. and S-F.S. Graphene devices were fabricated by S-F.S. Theory and data analysis was performed by M.W.G. and P.L.M. All authors participated in the elaboration of the research project.

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Correspondence to Matt W. Graham or Paul L. McEuen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Graham, M., Shi, SF., Ralph, D. et al. Photocurrent measurements of supercollision cooling in graphene. Nature Phys 9, 103–108 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2493

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