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Fast thermal relaxation in cavity-coupled graphene bolometers with a Johnson noise read-out

Nature Nanotechnology volume 13, pages 797–801 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

High sensitivity, fast response time and strong light absorption are the most important metrics for infrared sensing and imaging. The trade-off between these characteristics remains the primary challenge in bolometry. Graphene with its unique combination of a record small electronic heat capacity and a weak electron–phonon coupling has emerged as a sensitive bolometric medium that allows for high intrinsic bandwidths1–3. Moreover, the material’s light absorption can be enhanced to near unity by integration into photonic structures. Here, we introduce an integrated hot-electron bolometer based on Johnson noise readout of electrons in ultra-clean hexagonal-boron-nitride-encapsulated graphene, which is critically coupled to incident radiation through a photonic nanocavity with Q = 900. The device operates at telecom wavelengths and shows an enhanced bolometric response at charge neutrality. At 5 K, we obtain a noise equivalent power of about 10 pW Hz–1/2, a record fast thermal relaxation time, <35 ps, and an improved light absorption. However the device can operate even above 300 K with reduced sensitivity. We work out the performance mechanisms and limits of the graphene bolometer and give important insights towards the potential development of practical applications.

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Fig. 1: Device schematics and operation principle.
Fig. 2: Role of the PCC in enhancement of the bolometric response.
Fig. 3: Bolometric response.
Fig. 4: Detector performance.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Levitov, D. Prober, P. Kim and F. Koppens for fruitful discussions. D.K.E. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain through the Severo Ochoa programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0522), Fundació Privada Cellex, Fundació Privada Mir-Puig, the Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA program and the La Caixa Foundation. D.E. acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research under grant no. N00014-14-1-0349. Y.G., C.T. and J.H. acknowledge support from the US Office of Naval Research, grant N00014-13-1-0662. K.C.F. acknowledges support from Raytheon BBN Technologies. B.S. was supported as part of the MIT Center for Excitonics, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0001088. J.Z. carried out research in part at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-SC0012704. This work is supported in part by the Semiconductor Research Corporation’s NRI Center for Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICFO - Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain

    Dmitri K. Efetov

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Ren-Jye Shiue, Evan D. Walsh, Hyeongrak Choi, Jiabao Zheng, Gabriele Grosso, Cheng Peng & Dirk Englund

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Yuanda Gao, Cheng Tan & James Hone

  4. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Brian Skinner

  5. Raytheon BBN Technologies, Quantum Information Processing Group, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Kin Chung Fong

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  1. Dmitri K. Efetov
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Contributions

D.K.E., K.C.F. and D.E. conceived and designed the experiments. D.K.E. and R.-J.S. performed the experiments. D.K.E. analysed the data. B.S. performed the theoretical modelling of the data. Y.G., C.T., C.P., H.C., E.D.W., J.Z. and G.G. contributed materials/analysis tools. J.H., K.C.F. and D.E. supported the experiments. D.K.E. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Dmitri K. Efetov.

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Efetov, D.K., Shiue, RJ., Gao, Y. et al. Fast thermal relaxation in cavity-coupled graphene bolometers with a Johnson noise read-out. Nature Nanotech 13, 797–801 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-018-0169-0

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