Circular photocurrent in the carbon nanowall film.

Abstract

We report the helicity-dependent photocurrent in the carbon nanowall film synthesized on the silicon substrates by the chemical vapor deposition technique. The film is composed of multilayer graphene flakes grown along the substrate normal. We measured the transverse photocurrent generated in the film under irradiation with nanosecond laser pulses by depositing two conductive electrodes along the plane of incidence. The measurements were performed by using elliptically polarized fundamental, second-, third-, and fourth-harmonics beams of the Nd:YAG laser. We revealed that the shorter the excitation wavelength, the higher the magnitude of the helicity-dependent transverse photocurrent generated in the film. In particular, at wavelengths of 266 and 355 nm, the photocurrent strongly depends on the degree of the circular polarization of the laser beam while, at the wavelength of 1064 nm, the transverse photocurrent is almost helicity independent.