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Electrically Tunable Nonequilibrium Optical Response of Graphene.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Pogna, Eva AA 
Tomadin, Andrea 
Paradisanos, Ioannis 

Abstract

The ability to tune the optical response of a material via electrostatic gating is crucial for optoelectronic applications, such as electro-optic modulators, saturable absorbers, optical limiters, photodetectors, and transparent electrodes. The band structure of single layer graphene (SLG), with zero-gap, linearly dispersive conduction and valence bands, enables an easy control of the Fermi energy, EF, and of the threshold for interband optical absorption. Here, we report the tunability of the SLG nonequilibrium optical response in the near-infrared (1000-1700 nm/0.729-1.240 eV), exploring a range of EF from -650 to 250 meV by ionic liquid gating. As EF increases from the Dirac point to the threshold for Pauli blocking of interband absorption, we observe a slow-down of the photobleaching relaxation dynamics, which we attribute to the quenching of optical phonon emission from photoexcited charge carriers. For EF exceeding the Pauli blocking threshold, photobleaching eventually turns into photoinduced absorption, because the hot electrons' excitation increases the SLG absorption. The ability to control both recovery time and sign of the nonequilibrium optical response by electrostatic gating makes SLG ideal for tunable saturable absorbers with controlled dynamics.

Description

Keywords

cooling dynamics, graphene, hot electrons, optical phonons, phonon bottleneck, tunable dynamics

Journal Title

ACS Nano

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1936-0851
1936-086X

Volume Title

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K01711X/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K017144/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L016087/1)
European Research Council (319277)
European Research Council (842251)

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2023-08-31 13:23:12
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2022-01-08 00:30:56
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