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Surface plasmons

A probe for graphene electronics

Nature Nanotechnology volume 8, pages 802–803 (2013)Cite this article

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The local electronic properties of graphene grain boundaries can be obtained by deciphering the interference patterns produced by surface plasmons.

Surface plasmon polaritons are electromagnetic waves that are formed by coupling light and free-electron oscillations at the surface of a metal or a semiconductor. The dual identity of these polaritons — half optical wave, half electronic oscillation — offers the possibility of simultaneously carrying out optical imaging and probing the electronic properties of the surface of a material. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Dimitri Basov of the University of California, San Diego and colleagues in the US, Singapore, Germany and Spain now report that they have used nanoscale plasmon interferometry to optically image grain boundaries on graphene samples grown by chemical vapour deposition (CVD)1. The interferometric signal leads to a direct measurement of the charge-carrier density and the scattering rate at the grain boundaries, and the results can explain why static electronic conductivity is greatly reduced on CVD-grown graphene compared with pristine graphene.

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Figure 1: Principle of scanning plasmon interferometry.

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  1. Rémi Carminati is at the Institut Langevin, ESPCI ParisTech, CNRS, 1 rue Jussieu, 75238 Paris, France

    Rémi Carminati

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  1. Rémi Carminati
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Correspondence to Rémi Carminati.

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Carminati, R. A probe for graphene electronics. Nature Nanotech 8, 802–803 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.220

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