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Photoinduced doping in heterostructures of graphene and boron nitride

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 348–352 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

The design of stacks of layered materials in which adjacent layers interact by van der Waals forces1 has enabled the combination of various two-dimensional crystals with different electrical, optical and mechanical properties as well as the emergence of novel physical phenomena and device functionality2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Here, we report photoinduced doping in van der Waals heterostructures consisting of graphene and boron nitride layers. It enables flexible and repeatable writing and erasing of charge doping in graphene with visible light. We demonstrate that this photoinduced doping maintains the high carrier mobility of the graphene/boron nitride heterostructure, thus resembling the modulation doping technique used in semiconductor heterojunctions, and can be used to generate spatially varying doping profiles such as p–n junctions. We show that this photoinduced doping arises from microscopically coupled optical and electrical responses of graphene/boron nitride heterostructures, including optical excitation of defect transitions in boron nitride, electrical transport in graphene, and charge transfer between boron nitride and graphene.

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Figure 1: Experimental observation of photoinduced modulation doping effect in G/BN heterostructures.
Figure 2: Transport characteristics of G/BN after photoinduced modulation doping.
Figure 3: Dynamics and origin of photoinduced modulation doping effect.
Figure 4: Optical spectrum of defect states in h-BN.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank P. Jarillo-Herrero and N. Gabor for stimulating discussions and B. Standley for help with data acquisition software. Graphene synthesis, device fabrication and optical measurements were supported by the Office of Naval Research (award N00014-13-1-0464). Electrical measurements and theoretical analysis of this work were mainly supported by the Office of Basic Energy Science, Department of Energy (contract no. DE-SC0003949, Early Career Award; DE-AC02-05CH11231, Materials Science Division). F.W. acknowledges support from a David and Lucile Packard fellowship. J.V.J. acknowledges support from the UC President's Postdoctoral fellowship.

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Author notes

  1. L. Ju and J. Velasco: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    L. Ju, J. Velasco Jr, E. Huang, S. Kahn, C. Nosiglia, Hsin-Zon Tsai, M. Crommie, A. Zettl & F. Wang

  2. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing, China

    W. Yang & G. Zhang

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

    T. Taniguchi & K. Watanabe

  4. State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Y. Zhang

  5. Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    M. Crommie, A. Zettl & F. Wang

  6. Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    M. Crommie, A. Zettl & F. Wang

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  1. L. Ju
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Contributions

F.W. and L.J. conceived the experiment. L.J. and J.V.J. carried out optical and electronic measurements. J.V.J., E.H., S.K., C.N., H.T and W.Y. contributed to sample fabrication, K.W. and T.T. synthesized the h-BN samples, F.W., J.V.J. and L.J. performed data analysis and theoretical analysis. F.W., L.J. and J.V.J. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to F. Wang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ju, L., Velasco, J., Huang, E. et al. Photoinduced doping in heterostructures of graphene and boron nitride. Nature Nanotech 9, 348–352 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.60

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